Episode 668: Anton LaVey Part III - The Devil's Rain

Summary

Last Podcast On The Left – Episode 668: Anton LaVey Part III – The Devil's Rain

Date: June 12, 2026
Host(s): Marcus Parks, Henry Zabrowski, Eddie (Ed Larson)
Theme: The wild, theatrical rise of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan – its origins, rituals, cultural collisions, and descent into chaos, power struggles, and B-movie stardom.

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Episode Overview

The third installment in the Anton LaVey series tears into the Church of Satan’s most scandalous and surreal years. The hosts chronicle the meteoric rise of LaVey's theatrical Satanic rituals, their surprising links to true crime and pop culture (notably the Manson murders and Hollywood), the Church’s transformation from a local San Francisco oddity to a nationwide—and eventually worldwide—phenomenon, and ultimately, LaVey’s disillusionment and his sideways slide into B-movie consulting. The episode is riotous, profane, and in classic LPoTL style, mixes fast-paced banter, gruesome historical details, detailed character studies, and incisive cultural commentary.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Susan Atkins: From Church Rituals to Murder

• The "Sexy Sadie" Connection:
  • Susan Atkins (AKA “Sexy Sadie”), later infamous as a key Manson Family murderer, was recruited by LaVey to perform as a “vampire girl” in a public ritual at Gigi’s Lounge before her fall into infamy ([04:32]-[09:23]).
  • Marcus: “She was actually too scared to perform her part on stage. Until of course, someone gave her a tab of acid.” [08:44]
• Rituals as Performance:
  • The hosts emphasize LaVey’s events at Gigi’s were flashy, paid “psychopomp” stage shows designed for attention and controversy ([08:02]).
  • Henry: “Would he charge a cover?” Marcus: “Oh God, yes. $2.50. So it’s a show.”
• Drugs and Decline:
  • LaVey publicly distances himself from Atkins after her arrest, calling her “an average Haight Street burnout...Flaky and made to order for someone like Charles Manson to control.” ([13:01]-[13:53])
  • The hosts draw distinctions between LaVey’s “bad man” persona and the true manipulative evil of cult leaders like Manson.

2. Birth and Theatrics of the Church of Satan

• The First Satanic Baptism:
  • LaVey’s public satanic baptism of his daughter Zena becomes a media spectacle ([14:29]-[16:17]).
  • Marcus: “Having a naked woman present during the baptism was, in my opinion, gilding the lily just a bit...in 1968, having a naked woman present at a ritual involving a three year old, it was gonna make all the wrong waves in the press.” [15:46]
• Black Mass Rituals – Inspiration and Execution:
  • Marcus shares findings from obscure men’s magazines, suggesting LaVey adapted existing occult fantasies for his own church’s ceremonies ([22:19]-[25:46]).
  • Ritual elements included: reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards, using a naked woman as an altar, a performance involving mud and fake excrement aimed at a stand-in for the Pope, and the symbolic use of the Devil’s horns ([26:09]-[34:16]).
  • On the meaning of “altar”: Henry breaks down the literal positioning of the naked altar and the placing of the “host” (crackers) into the vagina ([26:37]-[27:20]).
  • Memorable moment: LaVey getting “pee shy” when supposed to urinate on a Christian figurine ([30:35]-[31:20]).
• Community and Normalcy After Ritual:
  • After the rites: “members...retreated to his kitchen, where they schmoozed over...coffee, tea and cake. And not cum cake either, regular cake, just normalized cake.” ([34:50])

3. The Satanic Bible: Plagiarism and Philosophy

• Book as Merch (and Collage):
  • Marcus: “The Satanic Bible was more of a cash grab meant to capitalize on the recent success of the Roman Polanski classic Rosemary’s Baby...it was far too short and it was an absolute mess.” ([38:01])
  • Eddie: “Cookbook’s great way to start for the. It’s actually really good for ritual writing.” ([38:43])
• Heavily Borrowed Content:
  • LaVey lifted content from Ragnar Redbeard’s social Darwinist screed Might is Right and from Ayn Rand’s objectivism ([38:56]-[41:36]).
  • Notable comparison: “Ironically...today’s Christians actually follow Church of Satan philosophy far more than the teachings of Jesus Christ.” ([41:49])
  • Henry reads with gusto LaVey’s “blessings” ([42:13]).
• Underlying Ethos:
  • Eddie: “The point of this is to give to dweebs and nerds the ability to be like, no...This is an overcorrection.” ([43:42])
  • Marcus: “It really comes down to living a life that makes you happy and successful while doing everything in your power to ensure that your happiness does not come at the expense or the pain of others.” ([44:13])
• Satanists as (Surprisingly) Helpful People:
  • Henry recounts meeting “kind,” helpful Satanists who debunked the evil image.

4. Michael Aquino, the Rise of Church Bureaucracy, and the Grotto System

• Michael Aquino’s Arrival and Rise:
  • Aquino, a US Army officer and self-styled “Santa Barbara goth,” is introduced as a pivotal but “dweeby” organizational figure ([47:12]-[54:13]).
  • His background in ROTC/Army and psychological warfare (including blaring “demonic screams” at the enemy in Vietnam) earns both awe and derision from the hosts ([50:02]-[51:32]).
  • Marcus: “[His] crises had nothing to do with his career in the armed forces...Michael Aquino stayed in the military as a powerful and influential figure...even with his incredibly goofy eyebrows, which were styled into points to mimic devil horns.” ([51:24])
• The Grotto System & The Council of Nine:
  • Aquino’s Boy Scout-like “Grotto system” is designed for local Satanist chapters ([54:34]-[57:56]).
  • Memorable moment: Henry: “And I have two hooves for hands.” Eddie: “Just get the fuck out of here.” ([54:59])
  • Grottoes proliferate but are soon plagued with infighting, bureaucracy, and nerd energy.
  • Marcus on LaVey’s view: “...turned the Church into a Satan pen pal club.” ([59:44])

5. Disillusionment, Decay, and the Retreat to B-Movie Hollywood

• Collapse of Rituals and Fragmentation:
  • Scenes become more performative, less meaningful; LaVey is disenchanted by members’ lack of subtlety—“huddled together in black velvet robes and capes with huge baphomet necklaces at the airport...there’s a time and place for this shit and it ain’t the fucking airport.” ([60:16])
  • Quotes LaVey: “I was trying to present a cultured, mannered image. And their idea of protesting a shock was to wear their lodge regalia into the nearest Denny’s.” ([60:47])
  • The rise of danger: as Satanic panic and hostility escalates, LaVey fortifies his house against attacks ([62:38]).
• Shift to Hollywood & B-Movie Consulting:
  • LaVey claims (falsely) to have worked on Rosemary’s Baby; in reality he consults on The Devil’s Rain, The Mephisto Waltz, and The Car ([70:34]-[75:41]).
  • Eddie, on LaVey’s motives: “He just wanted to make movies at this point. He knew. He never wanted to make a religion, really.” ([71:11])
  • The Devil’s Rain (1975):
    • LaVey serves as technical adviser and appears in cameos; notable cast includes William Shatner, Tom Skerritt, Ernest Borgnine, and (briefly) John Travolta ([76:24]-[78:23]).
    • Odd B-movie rituals: LaVey leads extras through real occult chants with phonetic cue cards ([78:52]).
    • Factoid: William Shatner's face mold from the film later becomes the Michael Myers Halloween mask ([77:13]).
    • John Travolta receives “success ritual” from LaVey, then books Welcome Back, Kotter ([85:27]).

6. Sammy Davis Jr, Satanic Seekers, and the Mainstream

• Sammy Davis Jr’s Satanism:
  • Rolling Stone deep-dive referenced; Sammy’s identity struggles, turbulent career, and endless quest for acceptance leads him through Scientology, Judaism, and ultimately to the Church of Satan.
  • He finds radical acceptance among Satanists, participating in both the rituals and orgies ([100:16]-[102:18]).
  • Marcus: “The Church of Satan made him happy. And they accepted him.”
• Satanism on TV: "Poor Devil"
  • The TV-movie "Poor Devil," starring Sammy as a soul working in hell, is directly inspired by his real-life participation in Satanic culture ([97:13]-[98:58]).
  • Marcus, on Sammy’s addition to Satanic rituals: “Sammy Davis Jr. Mugging while flashing the devil horn salute...He even got one little fingernail painted red.” ([99:36])
  • Church co-founder Diane Hagarty and Michael Aquino are thrilled at the Church of Satan’s mention on national television.

7. Themes & Takeaways

• The Limits of Edginess:
  • The ritual theatrics draw in nerds, weirdos, and the alienated—but also devolve into bureaucracy and spectacle.
• Community vs. Individualism:
  • “...just because I’m hanging out with a bunch of people, do I have to put a bunch of rules around it?” ([58:54])
  • Building community is hard for Satanists who supposedly oppose authority/hierarchy, but crave belonging ([58:40]-[58:49]).
• Success, Alienation, Transformation:
  • LaVey becomes exhausted by the attention, the culture war, and the lack of “cool” among his followers; he drifts from Satanic kingpin to a footnote in Hollywood ([71:24]).
  • The Church fragments: intellectual “elites,” B-movie cameos, and internal cult spinoffs (hinted next episode: Temple of Set).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

On the Susan Atkins ritual:

• Marcus: “She was actually too scared to perform her part on stage. Until of course, someone gave her a tab of acid.” [08:44]

On ritual performance and meaning:

• Marcus: “There's a lot going on in a Black Mass. There's a lot going on in every corner of the room at the same time...a red headed congregant laid naked across the lap of another naked acolyte who whipped the redhead with a cat o. nine tails.” [27:28]
• Henry: “I want to have that first [moist cracker]. All right, give me, give me, give me. I love it. I love the devil.” [27:37]

On philosophy and plagiarism:

• Marcus: “The Satanic Bible was more of a cash grab...it was far too short and it was an absolute mess.” [38:01]
• Eddie: “It’s not supposed to...stand up because it’s not supposed to. Like if you read all just the stuff inside the Satanic Bible without realizing why it’s there or like what the point of it is…it’s defined by its opposition.” [37:19]

On hierarchical Satanism:

• Marcus: “the Grotto system under Michael Aquino had, again, in lay's words, turned the Church into a Satan pen pal club.” [59:44]

On public perception and awkward followers:

• LaVey (read by Eddie): “I was trying to present a cultured, mannered image. And their idea of protesting a shock was to wear their lodge regalia into the nearest Denny’s.” [60:47]

On the pitfalls of subcultural community:

• Eddie: “every single time you do that, when you form a Facebook group or you form a Reddit group, [it] begins to suck and does begin to eat itself.” [64:33]

On the Devil’s Rain:

• Marcus: “The Devil’s Rain was a full on production and Anton LaVey was present...He did set design, costume design, and his name is prominently displayed in the opening credits as technical adviser and high priest of Satan...” [78:34]
• Henry: “Marcus made me watch it last night and I can’t tell if I know more or less about Satanism now.” [76:35]
• Marcus: “...a plastic mold was made of William Shatner’s face...that same model of mask was later painted white and turned into the face of Michael Myers for the Halloween movies.” [77:13]

On John Travolta’s Satanic “Success Ritual”:

• Marcus: “...he did a satanic success ritual for John Travolta during filming. And sure enough, shortly after, Travolta did indeed book the role that would make him famous...” [85:27]

On Sammy Davis Jr discovering Satanism:

• Marcus: “[Sammy Davis Jr.] was a man who had spent his entire life searching for a place where he could be accepted and wanted for who he actually was rather than what people thought he should be.” [102:41]

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Segment Timestamps for Key Sections

• Susan Atkins and the Witch's Sabbath: [03:02]–[10:28]
• Origin and Nature of Church of Satan Rituals: [14:17]–[34:16]
• The Satanic Bible: Philosophy, Plagiarism and Influence: [35:31]–[44:13]
• Michael Aquino, Bureaucracy, and the Grotto Era: [46:19]–[59:44]
• Outrage at Public Satanism & LaVey’s Disillusionment: [59:44]–[64:33]
• LaVey in Hollywood: B-movie Consulting & The Devil’s Rain: [70:34]–[85:10]
• Sammy Davis Jr., Satanism, and the TV movie Poor Devil: [86:33]–[101:02]

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Tone and Style

• The hosts keep things darkly comic, irreverent, and profane, constantly shifting between deep dives into history, gleeful vulgarity, and sharp cultural criticism.
• Minimal reverence for sacred cows of any kind—Christianity, Satanism, American exceptionalism, and Hollywood are all gleefully roasted.

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In Summary

This episode lays bare the weird journey of the Church of Satan from a parodic, attention-grabbing San Francisco cabal to a cross-country movement and then into schismatic bureaucracy and showbiz farce. The hosts expertly balance mockery with insight, turning LaVey’s movement into an object lesson about the dangers, and unintended consequences, of taking counterculture, performance, and self-invention a little too seriously—until it all collapses under the weight of its own ridiculousness.

Next up: The conclusion of Anton LaVey's saga, featuring the Church of Satan’s split, the rise of the Temple of Set, and the legacy left in occult, subcultural, and pop-cultural history.

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Hail Satan! Hail Cake and Coffee! Hail the Denny’s goths!

Transcript

[Eddie]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Eddie]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Eddie]

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[Marcus Parks]

There's no place to escape to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is the last on the left.

[Eddie]

That's when the cannibalism started.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What was that?

[Eddie]

I'm Susie Atkins.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, is that what's.

[Eddie]

I was trying to figure out the Susie Atkins voice. It's been a while since I even thought of it.

[Marcus Parks]

You're gonna.

[Eddie]

There's a more Janice. Like for sure.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I think it's more Janice.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, really, the Manson girls, they're far more like tough than like. When you listen to them talk like Charlie Manson is the genius man in this world. Ain't nobody going to take Manson down.

[Eddie]

It's kind of crazy to see tiny little ladies going like, I'll kill a police officer for Charlie. He's my Christ. He's my Satan in arms.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, they're all hot chicks that ate rocks.

[Eddie]

You know, like they weren't as hot as you. You know, when you look back on they. They're younger man's energy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I say I bet you clean them then little Manson girls up. You take them anywhere you want.

[Eddie]

Disgust me.

[Marcus Parks]

Welcome to last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabrowski and I'm

[Eddie]

taking a swiffer to the Manson girl. My job is I'm scrubbing them up, scrubbing them down, getting them ready for Ed's consumption.

[Marcus Parks]

We've got the man who will give any woman a chance. It's Ed Larson.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All right, here's comes the hoes there Twiggy. Who's it?

[Eddie]

One of them. They're sneezy. There's a lot of them.

[Marcus Parks]

You're thinking of Squeaky from is who

[Eddie]

you're thinking of Squeaky.

[Marcus Parks]

And here we are at anton Lave Part 3. Part 3 of 4.

[Eddie]

We're going to get into it. We are doing Satanism fully.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And Anton lavey fully. Because it's not just Anton lavey. That's the thing about Satanism. It's not just him, it's everybody around him. There's so many fascinating stories within the story of Anton lavey.

[Eddie]

Also, if you come to believe Anton, which I do over time, he even pushes, he even positions himself as one of the least important people within the organization. He is. When he starts it, the whole thing is like, oh no, what have I done? The second he starts it, it's all like, oh fuck, these losers are coming. Which is where we've hit right now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I really go back and forth on him the whole time like, this guy's a schmuck. And I was like, ah, I get it.

[Marcus Parks]

And you know what? That's by design. Yeah. So when we Last left Anton Lavey, the year was 1967, and the church of Satan had publicly established itself using Anton's infamous Black House as the church's headquarters right in the heart of San Francisco. But while Anton lavey's theatrical style and Freedom Forward ideas were attracting celebrities like Jayne Mansfield, the Church of Satan also began to cross paths with far more infamous characters in entirely by coincidence. See, by 1968, Anton Lavey expanded ceremonies beyond the Black House to public occult ritual performances in other venues. And in February he chose a lounge club called Gigi's in San Francisco as the site of a highly produced ritual called the Witch's Sabbath.

[Eddie]

And the key word is produced.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, amongst other moving parts. One aspect of the performance called for a bare breasted young woman to jump out of a coffin and walk around acting like a vampire on stage.

[Eddie]

Fuck yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Lavey thought that he'd found the perfect girl for the role after seeing an 18 year old dancing at a local topless bar. Girl who called herself Sharon King. History, however, knows Sharon King better by her real name.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sharon Stone, man.

[Eddie]

Oh,

[Marcus Parks]

Susan Atkins.

[Eddie]

Yeah, it's me, yeah. Oh, just the idea. I know Anton lavey had a type, but just her going like, ye buzz honey, ye buzz honey.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sharon King was her group sex name. Yeah. Cause she was the sharing king.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, fun. Well, if the name Susan Atkins doesn't ring a bell. Susan Atkins, AKA Sexy Sadie.

[Eddie]

I'm the sexy one. I'm the sexy one. I'm the one they bring out for public. Example.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh God, here's some listery.

[Eddie]

Yeah, that's some spicy beer.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Supposed to Spit it out.

[Eddie]

They all say that she was the

[Marcus Parks]

only member of the Manson family present at all three murder scenes. It's Gary Himon, the Tate massacre, and the La Bianca massacre. And it was Susan's bragging while in jail on car theft charges that eventually led authorities to link the Tate LaBianca murders to Charles Manson, central figure in the Manson story. But just a couple of years earlier, Susan Atkins was just another abandoned child of the 1960s who'd made her way to San Francisco as a teenager. But instead of joining the love and peace side of the flower generation, Atkins had become a stripper at 17 and lived an extremely reckless life of drugs and sex.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Judgy, judgy, judgy, right.

[Eddie]

It's reckless, right.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you know how reckless you gotta be to get a case of gonorrhea so bad that you gotta be hospitalized? Yeah.

[Eddie]

The doctor didn't understand when I showed him my gonorrhea. My gonorrhea said, hi, this is supposed

[Henry Zabrowski]

to be yellow, not green. Yeah, I know.

[Eddie]

Congratulations to me, I guess.

[Marcus Parks]

After she was cured and released of

[Eddie]

this, they needed to bring in a priest. They had to take a priest. And they came in, they blessed my cute, and the demon jumped out of me and into hell.

[Marcus Parks]

After the gonorrhea was cleared up, Susan Atkins met Charles Manson in San Francisco shortly following Charlie's release from prison.

[Eddie]

Let me tell, let me guess. You're just freshly clean, right? I can tell. I have the psychic ability to tell when gonorrhea has just left the body, Man, I can smell it. Antibiotics on a woman I know you got. You went to a doctor for that. And it was no witch. You're the witch, bitch.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, this was back when Charles Manson was just an older guy in his early 30s with a guitar and a good line of bullshit. Incredibly, though, not long after Atkins met Manson, Anton lavey noticed Susan Atkins dancing at her club. And lavey figured that she'd be perfect for the role of the vampire girl in his new public ritual performance at Gigi's, set to premiere in Febr of 1968.

[Eddie]

There is a distinct difference between the public performances and the stuff that Anton lavey and his inner crew would do at this time period. And that is here, really, the distinct difference is that he was obviously a PR machine.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

So a lot of this really was straight up performances. Yeah. This is all about advertising, it's attention.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Would he charge a cover?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Oh, God, yes. $2.50.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So it's a show.

[Marcus Parks]

It's 100% a show.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean this, it had reviews like the newspapers came out.

[Eddie]

You know what you call it? The term would be psychopomp. Yeah, it was the, the idea of doing a public thing that was kind of an example of your magic.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. So after being invited back to the Black House to participate in dress rehearsals for the witch's Sabbath show at Gigi's, Susan Atkins reportedly got spooked by all the trappings of the Satanic Church.

[Eddie]

So funny.

[Marcus Parks]

She was actually too scared to perform her part on stage. Until of course, someone gave her a tab of acid.

[Eddie]

I need my acid. I only perform when I have my acid. I gotta have it. You go. God.

[Marcus Parks]

Just.

[Eddie]

Just so scared. Scared? What of the fireplace?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Scared of the.

[Eddie]

What?

[Marcus Parks]

Blue Sunshine. I asked for orange. Sunshine.

[Eddie]

That's what I like. I'm allergic to the orange.

[Henry Zabrowski]

She's an 18 year old. She's an idiot.

[Marcus Parks]

Wildly hallucinating, Susan Atkins got into a coffin wearing 2 inch long red fingernails and a jet black wig. And when it came time for her to pop out in the middle of the psychopomp, she did her best as the bare breasted vampire.

[Eddie]

I don't drink. I know how to do this.

[Marcus Parks]

But since both audience and newspaper reviews for the witches Sabbath were lukewarm at best, that was the end of Anton's working relationship with Susan Atkins and the end of Susan's involvement with the Church of Satan. Soon after though, the house where Susan Atkins and Charles Manson were living in San Francisco got raided by the police. So Manson asked Atkins if she wanted to join him for a summer road trip down to Los Angeles. They were going to drive down in a converted school bus with all the other lost souls Manson had gathered in San Francisco since he'd arrived. This, of course, was the first iteration of the Manson family. They would all soon settle at Spahn Ranch. And By August of 1969, just 18 months after Atkins performed in Lavey's show, Atkins was writing the word pig on Sharon Tate's front door with Sharon's own blood.

[Eddie]

It's all about coming to play where the work is. Yeah, that's what all. That's what Hollywood's always been about. It's where the work is and that's where you go. So of course she got picked up that quickly because she went where it was. If you're, If Sharon Tate was in San Francisco, she'd carve out the baby there. You got to come to Los Angeles.

[Henry Zabrowski]

How many people got murdered in Tate?

[Marcus Parks]

Those. Five. Five or six.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, it sucks for everyone else that Wasn't a hot blonde, like, movie star. They just. They're just lumped in. In the tape murder.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, Abigail. Yeah. Abigail Folger. Stephen Parent. There was. Was that Wojciech Frykowski job to fucking

[Eddie]

know their name, but was really sad.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eddie]

The other ones were just, you know, obviously just acceptable losses.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Stephen Parent was just there to buy a radio from a guy that lived in the back house. Like, he was just complete, like, completely wrong place at the wrong time. Why? Jack Frykowski was kind of in love with Sharon Tate. Abigail Folger was just. She was an heir. She was the heiress to the Folger fortune. Folger coffee. And they were just all there hanging out because Roman Polanski was out in, I think, London scouting for, I think, a dolphin movie. Some really stupid.

[Eddie]

Honestly, I. I will. I'm going to take that back immediately because they said a lot, you know, the other ones were accept losses. They weren't. The only acceptable loss that's ever been was that godforsaken meddling waiter when he got between O.J. and Nicole. My favorite couple.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Listen, man, I'm not gonna take this bad talk on waiters.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been a waiter. Oh, I was a bad one.

[Eddie]

But guess what you didn't do. Meddle in the affairs of a Hall of Famer. I did not.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Anton Levey certainly commented on his association with Susan Atkins, as he did with any infamous character who crossed his path. Susan Atkins was not even close to the last one.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he probably loved it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, well, I mean, he said that Susan's downfall came mostly because of drugs, which was a fair point, because events with the Manson family certainly would not have gotten as out of hand as they did without the excessive amount of acid that Manson was providing to family members. Of course, whether or not Manson was being provided that asset by the CIA is another matter altogether.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Long story.

[Eddie]

We'll get into. We are doing that.

[Marcus Parks]

We are doing it. Yeah. Leve, actually.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's great.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, bro.

[Eddie]

Come on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I want to do some CIA acid, dude.

[Eddie]

We have some orange.

[Marcus Parks]

Orange sunshine.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Is that what it is?

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That's the CIA. That's. That's CIA made, baby.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All right, well, you know the P.O. box there?

[Eddie]

You want to send a rainbow?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Levay actually had no sympathy whatsoever for the kids who fell under Manson's spells. Nor did he care for the unwashed masses flocking en masse to San Francisco in the late 60s, same time that he was trying to build the Church of Sa. Anton called Susan Atkins an average hate street burnout. Flaky and made to order for someone like Charles Manson to control. But really, that is what sets lavey apart from people like Charles Manson and what makes lavey just kind of a bad person rather than a figure of evil. From what it seems like, lavey never wanted to control anyone, or at least he never wanted to control people collectively. Control comes with responsibility. And as the story goes on, we'll see that responsibility was the last thing Anton lavey ever wanted.

[Eddie]

Anton lavey viewed responsibility as coming hand in hand with hypocrisy. Because at some level, as a boss, you're going to have to do things that are against your own rules because you have to set up. Oh. Because they are for me and not for the. It's just how it happens. So he specifically never wanted that shit. He never wanted it. He thought, this is what we'll get, obviously, as we go. This was all supposed to stay local.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it was supposed to stay local and I think it was just supposed to stay theatrical.

[Eddie]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, it was supposed to be like a theatrical thing. But, you know, we're, we're gonna get into pretty soon about what happens when you let the nerds in the door.

[Eddie]

Always.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now, as the Church of Satan grew in popularity and membership, so too did the rituals and the organization. Because Anton lavey quickly surmised that the rituals were what got him the most press and the most attention. So on May 23, 1967, Anton Lavey held the first public satanic baptism, using his three year old daughter Zena as the baptizonde, as it's called.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Cute.

[Marcus Parks]

According to Lavey, the ceremony was designed to delight the child by welcoming her into a world of indulgence with the sights and the smells that she liked, instead of being dunked in water, which is usually a terrifying experience. I don't know if the two of you were, you know, almost drowned.

[Eddie]

Yeah, I was green.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I was a baby. I don't care. But I watched my, my, my nephew do it recently and he was screaming like a lunatic. And I literally looked at Julie and I was like, I get it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I watched my dad do it in his 30s, and I was like, I'm not doing that ever.

[Eddie]

Because he got baptized late or.

[Marcus Parks]

He did. Yeah, yeah, late. No, he got baptized late.

[Eddie]

Yeah, yeah, that.

[Marcus Parks]

It didn't, yeah. Didn't take.

[Eddie]

No.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I, I, they, they tried to do it again to me, but it was hard to

[Marcus Parks]

get past my fists.

[Eddie]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give it a shot. Yeah. I'd rather you suck my dick

[Marcus Parks]

instead of a dunk. Zeena sat basking in the attention of admirers and the press. Although having a naked woman present during the baptism was, in my opinion, gilding the lily just a bit, there's of course, nothing wrong with nudity. I do think that Americans have been far too prudish about the human body for far too long. But Lavey had to know that in 1968, having a naked woman present at a ritual involving a three year old, it was gonna make all the wrong waves in the press, if press indeed was his main goal.

[Eddie]

I think he's one of naked chick there. And you forget, man, you know what it is? When we were just in Fairbanks, right? We were just there, we went to that great place and they were all talking about how, like, you forget how hippies live.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Like, these guys all, like, they were all talking about how they're like, yeah, last night all the babies were upstairs. We were partying down here, man. You know, it's nice because all the babies are up there and you're like, you have to forget. That was like a thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And my parents partied me. My. My know, Natalie was scarred by their partying around him. And so I feel like it's. It was just different times.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also, you live in a counterculture, you know, it's surprising, you know, when you're like, the press is bad. It's like, well, yeah, of course the reaction's gonna be bad. I was talking to Henry earlier. We used to have this show at the creek in the cave, Murderfist called Brown Sabbath. And I had Henry make the flyer. And I was like, hey, can you make a. A church with a big pile of on top of it? And I went around flyering. I'm out there in Long Island City, put. Trying to put this in. In bike stores, and people are like, no, I don'. Door. And I'm like, why not?

[Eddie]

This is the funniest thing in the world.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You just don't understand.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, no, it's like when I was in college, I was in a band. We called ourselves Hugs a bunch pedophile. And when we went out to put flyers around town, that's when we realized not everyone finds that funny. It's not that fun. It's not that funny. Of course, now it's stupid. A bunch of kids come up with. But yeah, no one wanted that in their. In their window.

[Eddie]

Yeah, exactly. And that's why we were where we were at man, they should have listened to us, dude. Brown Sabbath is a funny name. That's a funny ass name, dude.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Ye. I just played a bunch of like. There was like a Black Sabbath mariachi band. I played their music before the show. It was a lot of fun.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah, it's a great band.

[Eddie]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Eddie]

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[Marcus Parks]

the Church of Satan grew in popularity, Anton Lavey's Black Masses became more ornate. Although I made a discovery just this last weekend in Pittsburgh at my favorite store in America, Edie's Entertainment, that put the creation of the black masses in a whole new light. See, I'm a collector and one of the things I collect are the more obscure men's magazines from the 50s, 60s and 70s. The ones outside of your standard Playboys, Penthouses and Hustlers. Playboys Too high class. Hustlers too low class.

[Eddie]

Yeah, you don't like the pissing on The. On the ankles?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. In Penthouse. It's too middle of the road. And while the pornography contained therein is naturally a bonus. I live in the year 2026, for Christ's sake. I don't need magazines to obtain pornography.

[Eddie]

I also kind of feel weird. You know what's funny is I don't mind pre fluffing to a woman that's definitely dead, but there's like something about masturbating to completion to a woman that is very much a skeleton in a grave.

[Marcus Parks]

I have no problem with that. But that's neither here nor there.

[Eddie]

You're not jerking off to these magazines, are you?

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, no, no.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sure, it was funny.

[Marcus Parks]

It might lead to that, but it's not.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's a bonus. It's already stated it's a bonus.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a bonus.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's a cherry on top. I went to the store also with Marcus. It was a lot of fun, but we, like, separated, you know, because I like, got a DVD from like Bon 2008.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And I'm walking around and then all of a sudden I. There's like an area that you can't see. Then all of a sudden from inside, I go here.

[Eddie]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Which is normally the guy in that pornography section coming.

[Henry Zabrowski]

His pants, like, oh, that's Marcus.

[Marcus Parks]

I found a lot of great.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You had a full crate that you walked out of there with.

[Marcus Parks]

I absolutely did. And the main reason why I collect these magazines is because the articles work as a sort of secret history of the 20th century, if you know what to look for and if you know the historical context in which these articles were written. At Edie's in Pittsburgh, for example, I found an issue of a magazine called rogue from 1962, which contained an article by one of Anton Lavey's favorite authors, William Lindsay Gresham, author of Nightmare Alley,

[Eddie]

who he stole his whole life story from.

[Marcus Parks]

The content of this article was the history of the so called Black Mass published a full four years prior to the founding of the Church of Satan. Now, the article is filled with exaggerations and half truths, as many of these articles are, but I can almost guarantee that Anton lavey read this article. Not only was Anton also a fan of men's magazines, hell, we got an email from a fucking listener who said that he bought a whole stack of them from Anton lavey once.

[Eddie]

He famously was a magazine collector.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, but Gresham was also one of Anton's favorite writers. And this article was most likely the last thing Gresham wrote before he Died that same year in 1962. But as they say, the proof is in the pudding. And a lot of the things that Gresham talked about in this article, It's a fucking fantastic article. Talks about fictional 19th century depictions of black Masses, talked about historical rumor. They are all the same things that showed up in Anton lavey's Black Masses four years later, all the way down to using a naked woman as an altar. It's all there.

[Eddie]

Yes. I think that he was definitely inspired and he knew what to do from it because he was a collector of all these things. But then he did refine it, because he talked about.

[Marcus Parks]

Did refine it. Absolutely.

[Eddie]

The idea.

[Marcus Parks]

But the framework is. It's this article is the framework.

[Eddie]

Yes. He saw it because the Black Mass is really fun.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Technically, in many ways, it could be quite fun.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm surprised nothing ever happened. I mean, like, as a magazine collector and as a guy who loves candles that much, he really could have lit a fire.

[Marcus Parks]

Really? You gotta be careful.

[Eddie]

He's super good with fire. He's, you know, the Pope of the Church of Satan.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay.

[Eddie]

You'd think he'd have at least that on lockdown. It's more water. Yeah, I think he'd have problems with water.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, while Anton may have taken the framework from the black Masses from Gresham's article, he certainly added his own flair, as we can see from this description of a Black Mass. In 1968, when the church of Satan was firing on all cylinders, lavey read a recitation of the Lord's Prayer backwards. Then he inserted a triangular holy wafer into the vagina of a naked woman acting as the altar.

[Eddie]

You always made that sound.

[Marcus Parks]

Henry, could you explain for the listeners, like when I say, used a naked woman as an altar, could you explain to them what that means legitimately?

[Eddie]

She's lying on a. She's lying on a table. She is the thing that you put stuff on.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, see, I thought it was going to be her back and she was on all fours. I'm actually glad you said so.

[Eddie]

No, normally she's lying.

[Marcus Parks]

No, not like playing table.

[Eddie]

She's not the table. She's normally on a table. And people put things on her. There's also been those where they just stand. Because they'll stand next to the two things. I've seen that. But largely it's that. And then literally, they go, all right, damn, here comes the airplane. And then they bring in. They bring in the. The host and let's open up the hangar.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And then they.

[Eddie]

They spread her open and then they

[Henry Zabrowski]

just put crackers in her.

[Eddie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Like a PEZ dispenser upside down.

[Eddie]

Yes, yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, after removing the moist cracker from the vagina, lavey broke it up into six pieces and placed those pieces on the tongues of six congregants.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I want to have that first.

[Eddie]

All right, give me, give me, give me. I love it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I love the devil. That's great. I love the devil

[Marcus Parks]

at the same time, because there's a lot going on in a black mess. There's a lot going on in every corner of the room at the same time that this is happening. A red headed congregant laid naked across the lap of another naked acolyte who whipped the redhead with a cat o. Nine tails.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Not a table. Working up to the table.

[Marcus Parks]

Working up to the table.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That's the intern.

[Eddie]

Yes. She still giggles too much. They're here. Honestly, they're here. It's their semester from ucla. We love them here. It's just so nice to have you here, Gregory.

[Marcus Parks]

Meanwhile, another participant dressed like the Pope Pope was thrown to the floor by black robed men who all pulled down their pants and pretended to take a. On the Pope stand in.

[Eddie]

That's fun.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's fun.

[Eddie]

It is fun. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

A bunch of guys burning.

[Eddie]

I pooped. I pooped on the Pope. Poop on the Pope. On the Pope. Who's putting poop on the Pope?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Obviously I'm into it. From what I stated earlier just moments ago about the Brown Sabbath show, obviously.

[Marcus Parks]

And, and even though it's pretend, there was still a lot of stagecraft gear. They managed to splatter brown mud all over the Pope's face. The fake Pope's vestments. I don't know if they had like a, you know, like one of those like little squirt things in the sleeve or if their butts were filled with mud.

[Eddie]

I don't know, it might have been all been very symbolic.

[Marcus Parks]

It might. No, no, this was literal mud splashed over him.

[Eddie]

But I mean, even the pressing it upon him was probably like a they lift. They all brought the, the mud in and they brought it up and he'd go, no, the Duke has arrived. And then they have to like smear him with the Duke by hand and then he's just like, I'm duketh.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, after the man was adequately covered, the robed men dragged him out of the room while a Wagner record played and the whole congregation began the standard shouts of Hail Satan.

[Eddie]

Hail Satan.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hail Satan.

[Eddie]

Hail Satan.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hail Satan.

[Eddie]

And music. I said, hell, Satan music is by far the single most important thing in every single one these presentations.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Anton Levay specifically say that because again, of the presentation of it, everything has to do with classical music. And he said, well, again, one of the natural Satanists was Wagner, and another one was guy before Wagner named, like snooze. Some guy that also did like that kind of music.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Carl Orf.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I know he also loved, like Archibald Joyce. Like, he was big into Prokofie of as Jackman. So after covering the Pope in mud, lavey brought out a guy playing Jesus wrapped in a white sheet and carrying a cross on his back. Lavey would curse Jesus himself, calling him,

[Eddie]

quote, that ballad monstrosity that hangs limply upon the cross still.

[Marcus Parks]

And lavey then crushed a plastic Christian figurine and threw it into a chamber pot, proclaiming, yeah, don't switch around him

[Eddie]

and prove that he had never walked on water and he never shall again.

[Marcus Parks]

Lavey then ambled over to the pot, unzipped his fly, and tried in vain to piss on the remains of the figurine. Even the vay, it seemed, occasionally got stage fright.

[Eddie]

You know when you hear your dad in the morning, like, that's gotta be hard to hear that. Come on. Come on, evil piss. Come on.

[Marcus Parks]

Come on, little devil, let's do it. Why did I.

[Eddie]

Why did I piss before this? I knew I had to piss.

[Marcus Parks]

But while Anton did get a little pee shy during this particular Black Mass, he still took it in stride and asked the organist to, quote, play him some water music. The organist, Drawley, responded with an Irving Berlin song called How Dry I Am, which caused the congregation to break character with various knowing chuckles.

[Eddie]

Fucking good comedic piano man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But perhaps the levity was needed, for Anton's stream did flow from that point forward.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There it is.

[Marcus Parks]

And after he finished, the nude female acolytes in the room all took turns as well, including one who pissed in the bucket for what was said to be an uncomfortably long period of time.

[Eddie]

Jesus Christ, Sandra. Three and a half minutes ago. Some people have to catch a bus. Hey, Sandra, you have a problem? Is that. Are you just bleeding? What is happening to you? I don't even understand how you can have that much water inside if you're only 70% sure.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Mother A camel.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, this piss, I'm sure, was much to the pleasure of Anton Lavey, who had figured out how to make his personal sexual fetish. You're a feeling. A central tenet of the Church of Satan Black Mass.

[Eddie]

I mean, he's in charge, but after

[Marcus Parks]

the urine part of the ceremony was over, a woman dressed as a nun came out and did a strip tease to a particular waltz by Archibald Joyce, which very much reminds me of the type of music Jack Parsons listened to when he did magic. Let's listen to some of that Strip tease. Vision of Salome. It was used in a movie. I can't remember which one.

[Eddie]

Can we take this back? We need to do this for strip clubs. We need to go back to this. What if we go back to like Mata Hari and like the Dance of the Seven Veils?

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, it's still. There's someone in Los Angeles tonight stripping somewhere to a song like this. You can find it. Yeah, it's out there. Just go to the Magic Castle and start asking people. That's where you gotta. That's where that line starts.

[Eddie]

Unfortunately, I don't know if those magicians know a lot of ladies.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Man, those guys love ladies. That's why they get into magic. Otherwise they'd never talk to a woman.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's true. Now, in the conclusion of the Black Mass, Anton lavey would open his cape in front of the naked altar and hold his hands in the sign of the horns. Now, if you didn't know the devil horn sign actually has meaning because today the horns of Satan have pretty much evolved into a more intense tense. Thumbs up. When you like something, you do the devil horns.

[Eddie]

But it used to be. It's again, this is another those things. It used to freak people out.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. The two points of your index and pinky fingers represent goat horns thrust upwards in defiance of heaven, while the three fingers turned down are supposed to be in denial of the Holy Trinity, you know, but not everyone does.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And if you put the thumb out, that's I love you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, everybody, anybody can do ASL for deaf people.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know what, Marcus, that's for you.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, thank you.

[Eddie]

I hear nothing, I see nothing.

[Marcus Parks]

Back to you. Thank you. I mean, today it's. It's amazing that this thing that used to be, It's a well established fixture in American culture, like you see this anywhere and everywhere uses it. You see little flea games, you know?

[Eddie]

Yeah, yeah. Joe Biden did it once.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But considering a stroke. But concerning the end of this Black Mass, after three shouts of Hail Satan, lavey put out a candle, covered the naked woman who acted as the altar in a leopard skin blanket and carried her out of the. And room. Room. After the ritual was complete, the members of the Church of Satan, including Anton lavey, retreated to his kitchen, where they schmoozed over not alcohol, drugs, nor virgin's blood, but coffee, tea and cake. And not cum cake either, regular cake, just normalized cake. Yeah. No cakes of light, just tea and cake.

[Eddie]

This is really what Anton lavey was trying to strip away from all of the stuff is that after I read all the Aleister Crowley stuff, he's trying to remind people, people that the whole magic thing is actually here. Yeah, it's here amongst us. It's here in this room. Like, yeah, sure, it's we're praying to Satan, but what we're actually doing is building a community. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And nothing builds community like late night coffee.

[Eddie]

It really does it in a piece of cake.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

That is just one of my favorite ways to live life.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It is one of the things that they did that every other religion did.

[Eddie]

Is that funny?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hilarious.

[Eddie]

It's like they all do that. It's always coffee and cake.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Anton Lavey was certainly enjoying all this attention because by the end of 1968, he was advertising black Masses in San Francisco newspapers. And these gatherings became so popular that he would do the same performance two nights a week. By 1969, Anton Lavey claimed that the Church of Satan's membership had reached 10,000 worldwide, although the real number was almost certainly far lower. But even so, there were enough people paying attention for Anton to release his first book. This, of course, was the foundational text of the Church of Satan, the infamous Satanic Bible. Now, I didn't read the Satanic Bible until around 2012, but what surprised me most is that while it is incredibly judgmental and more than a little fascist, it basically reads like a guidebook for how to balance being a good person with standing up for yourself in the modern world. It's actually a great place to start when you're trying to figure out your own personal guidelines for living outside of a Christian framework. Because it really is far more of a philosophy book than a religious tome. It also isn't meant to be taken that seriously, nor is it meant to be the end all, be all. You don't end with the Satanic Bible. You begin with it.

[Eddie]

The key is to read it, because then you can really see what the actual tone is, which is mostly funny, largely. It is a lot of wink. It's a lot of tongue in cheek mixed with passionate belief systems that largely have to be included in context to the Christian church. That's what kind of the main issue about Satanism in general is, that even on its own as a religion, it doesn't kind of like stand up because it's not supposed to. Like if you read all just the stuff inside the Satanic Bible without realizing why it's there or like what the point of it is. It can't. It doesn't serve as a bunch of lessons.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, it really. It's defined by its opposition.

[Eddie]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

And when something is defined by opposition, then you know, it really can't stand on its own. And you really need something that stands on its own, which is why it took place, which is why it's a good place to start.

[Eddie]

Yes. And that's why Anton Lave, which we'll get to, was trying to fight it becoming a huge ass religion.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. And if you don't got time to read it, you can always read the Jump off a Cliff notes you God.

[Marcus Parks]

The Satanic Bible, however, is also largely plagiarized from many dubious sources.

[Eddie]

It better be.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Who did someone like, like, did like Penguin put it out? Like did someone like buy the.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it was a publisher. I think Avon was a publisher. It's been, you know, put out through various publishing houses throughout the years.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Takes a lot of balls.

[Eddie]

It does.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. See, according to Anton Lave's daughter Zena, who later did an expose on Lav's past after she broke with the Church, the Satanic Bible was more of a cash grab meant to capitalize on the recent success of the Roman Polansky classic Rosemary's Baby, which had greatly increased the public's appetite for Satanist and occult content. In other words, it's merch. Yeah. But when Anton Lavay and his partner Diane Hagarti gathered everything Anton had written about the Church of Satan for a book, it was far too short and it was an absolute mess. It's actually said that its editor, a woman named Carol Smith, who mostly did cookbooks, she was the one who made the Satanic Bible readable.

[Eddie]

Oh, I bet that a hundred percent. Honestly, cookbook's great way to start for the. It's actually really good for ritual writing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, you're gonna need like two ounces of blood.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's in Strange instructions, but to meet the length requirements laid out by the publisher lavey and Hagarty heavily borrowed from authors like the infamous Ragnar Redbeard, author of the anti Semitic white supremacist Social Darwinist garbage book Might is Right. In this book from 1896, Ragnar argued that weakness should be met with hatred and that social Darwinism should be the law of the land. Now Levey stripped out the anti Semitism, the Misogyny and the racism. But large parts of one section of the Satanic Bible, the book of Satan, were lifted from Ragnar Redbeard's writings. In fact, while it has been removed from recent printings, early editions of the Satanic Bible list Ragnar Redbeard as an influence. Midas right, by the way, has since had a resurgence among the more foul, far right manosphere influencers who have all spent the last few years absolutely ruining the Internet for reasonable people like ourselves.

[Eddie]

I will say as we're now that this is. I like that we're getting into this. Of course, this is one of the big major problems that Satanism has is this problem which is this idea of people don't understand fundamentally what all of this means and what Anton lavey meant by it. So that is. So go through this. You can kind of see and you can see why he chose this topic and then stripped it of all the quote unquote hate. I could see why he chose it. But we'll, we'll, let's, let's get into it now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You can't keep all that shit in there because he needs women to love it.

[Eddie]

Oh, no, it's not about that. Because again, it was all. It's not. How do you say this is the problem when something isn't that deep, that that's the problem almost is that when something becomes an Anton lavey, this is a problem. He set up an issue for himself in the future by not really thinking about it hard enough about what it was he was adding without the later on in the Devil's Notebook and speak of the devil. Anton Levey will couch this package, this more explain more what he kind of did. Like, he kind of does that over time. But in beginning, you know.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Satanic Bible is kind of rushed. It is like it's just sort of. It's put out because like, hey, we can make a lot of money because people are really into this Rosemary's Baby, like, let's get this thing out of there. So it's, you know, so yeah, there's a lot of in there that probably shouldn't be in there.

[Eddie]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Even more than Ragnar Redbeard, Anton lavey also stole from the much maligned objectivist writer Ayn Rand for his nine satanic statements. And those were meant to replace Christianity's Ten Commandments. Then he wanted statements instead of commandments. In fact, lavey himself said that lavey and Satanism was Christian, quote, just Ayn Rand's philosophy with ceremony and ritual added,

[Eddie]

which doesn't Even if you listen to Anton Lave. I'm sorry, he has no idea what the he's talking about. Because Anton, because an Ryan specifically doesn't believe that's what Objectivism. It can't have rituals in it, so it doesn't make any sense for them to have any rituals in it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, ironically though, considering how much Republicans love Ayn Rand because she helped bring their you I got mine philosophy to the modern world, I'd say that today's Christians actually follow Church of Satan philosophy far more than the teachings of Jesus Christ. For example, this blessing written by Anton lavey as a parody of Jesus's blessed are the meek speech. This might as well be the guiding light for the modern Republican Party. Henry, please.

[Eddie]

Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth. Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke. Blessed are the iron handed, for the unfit shall flee before them. Cursed are the poor in spirit, for they shall be spat upon.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

But the key is, okay, the church of Satan more than anything is a direct offense against the hippie movement and the Christian church. So in this world, the idea is God. You're supposed to be afraid of God and you're supposed to inherently obey God. You're supposed to obey your parents, you're supposed to obey the priests. Priests, you're supposed to do all these things and you're supposed to turn the other cheek when they punish you. So when they punish you, when something bad happens to you, you're just supposed to walk away. You're supposed to just lay down your arms and just take it. That is the whole thing. And with Christianity, that tenant makes you easy to control because eventually it's like you're just gonna do what I say because I'm telling you to say it. And this, you're literally, you're you like groveling and obeying me is a virtue. The idea of you, that being a virtue. So this is an over correction. The point of this is to give to dweebs and nerds the ability to be like, no. Like, you know when your mom, my mom said would your mom had the same philosophy. I don't want to see you start in a fight, but you can finish a fight.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sure.

[Eddie]

Right. So it is that idea of being like, no, fuck God. So like, oh, so God plays his little games with me and I'm not supposed to be fucking angry about it for his lessons. So everything bad he does to me is just a challenge that I'm just supposed to suck up and take you and it's like a genual, like, oh, all of these people. Just because you're wearing a suit, I'm supposed to think you're better than me? Just because you're. You act like you have some moral agency you have. You act, you act like you are the guy, the arbiter of morality. And I just have to believe you because you're on television.

[Marcus Parks]

You sure? I mean to bring the Satanic Bible down to its absolute basics. It really comes down to living a life that makes you happy and successful while doing everything in your power to ensure that your happiness does not come at the expense or the pain of others. And that's despite all of the book's negative influences, in my opinion. Anton lavey took a lot of really ugly shit and made a religion that when you strip away a lot of the edginess, it's actually quite nice. And it's far more realistic than Christianity as Christianity is actually practiced. Your opinion on that of course depends a lot on your opinion about the true nature of mankind. If we're inherently good, inherently bad, or as lavey sees it, an un. Honestly how I see it for somewhere in between.

[Eddie]

Because Christians believe we're bad. Do you know that?

[Marcus Parks]

Right, like original. No, original sin. The whole thing. We're born sinful.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The devil exists to scare them out of doing bad things, which guess what they do.

[Eddie]

They do bad things. Especially the ones that have the mandates because they've been given God's mandate. They've been told that they're chosen by God and so they can do whatever the they want.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Mike Pence was too scared to be alone with another woman.

[Eddie]

Yeah, that's how you know. So yes, yes, I do understand this. And then this will be the thing that will cause problems in the future for him. This will cause problems, but it's because of the, on like it's the not understanding it almost on purpose and also where he got it from.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sure, yeah. And I, I met a bunch of Satanists when I lived in Tallahassee and I was pretty close minded about Satanism at that point in my life because I was like, you know, 23 years old. I just think of like Satanism is

[Marcus Parks]

evil, you know, and then you're good, good Catholic boy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I wasn't at this point, I was an atheist, but like, but when I couple Satanists and they were so kind. Yeah, they were like literally like help me. My car was stuck on the side of the road and they came and helped me. And then like they helped. A couple of them helped Me move. I barely knew him. And then I started working with some of them at Hooters, and they were just like the guys who showed up to work on time.

[Eddie]

These are the guys.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Like. I don't know what to say.

[Eddie]

The guy you're describing, Eddie, is the guy that just now arriving in the story, who was Michael Aquino. So Michael Aquino is an example of this. This is that in Satanism, the most effective members have an extremely high moral viewpoint of the world. Like, that is the. That's the only way it works.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Annoyingly so.

[Eddie]

Yes, it is. The only way it even works is that you have. You. The whole point is that you are annoyingly moral.

[Marcus Parks]

I would say almost aggravatingly normal moral.

[Eddie]

Yes. That is the. You are. Because you have believed. You come to believe, which is what I come to believe that the Christian. Christian world is a. It's a place of sickness.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Like, it's like a place of. Of rot and poison. And then it's. And then until it's fixed from the bottom up, it's not good. It's not helping anybody.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I've seen way more evil in. In the Christian church than I have in the Satan church.

[Eddie]

Oh, yes, we all have.

[Marcus Parks]

No. Anyone who says any different isn't paying attention.

[Eddie]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, In March of 1969, Anton Levey's inner circle grew to include a member who would be far more of a pain in the ass to Anton lavey than he probably suspected. That man was the future founder of the templ example of set, Michael Aquino.

[Eddie]

Hail Satan. He is just. He's my best friend. Anton's just. You don't get it. You may have a bunch of rules. You don't follow him. I don't understand.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He was a big old boy, though. You portray him like such a dweeb. He looks scary.

[Eddie]

No, he's. He's chunker. Yeah. He's a.

[Marcus Parks]

He's a chubby man.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's also army trained. We'll get into it. All right.

[Marcus Parks]

Reportedly, Michael Aquino met Anton lavey at a showing of Rosemary's Baby when aquino was just 22 years old.

[Eddie]

Do you know that story?

[Marcus Parks]

No.

[Eddie]

It's so funny because Anton lavey would just show up things. So again, an example of why he was just a local character. Anything that was remotely evil, Anton LeVay and his crew would just show up. So, yeah, literally, Michael Aquino said he got out of the car and it was the premiere of Rosemary's Baby in San Francisco. And he said he watched the doors fling open and Anton lavey in his full hood, was out with all of his coterie and the. And he watched them all walk into a hearse. And he got in the hearse and drove off. And it was just Michael Aquino being like, I want to be just like that.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Michael and his wife quickly applied for membership in the church, and before long, they were participating in their first Satanic rituals. Aquino, however, does not in any way fit the profile of an average Satanist, or at least how people think an average Satanist would be. When Aquino met Anton lavey, Michael was an officer in the army who'd grown up as a conventionally respectable boy. Aquino was an Eagle Scout who joined the ROTC at UC Santa Barbara, graduating in 1968 as a distinguished military graduate. Do you know how much of a fucking nerd you have to be to join the ROTC in Santa Barbara in the 1960s?

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's so much just go surfing.

[Eddie]

He's too fat.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It was too fat for surfing.

[Eddie]

He definitely was a Santa Barbara Goth. And for those of you that know other Santa Barbara Goths or beachside Goths, you know for a fact, it's just him just going. All these people, their tight little tummies on their skateboards, they don't understand that the universe is complicated. I mean, I know many things meanwhile, like everybody's fucking and dancing and having a great time, and he's just sitting there just in. Like, they don't fucking read. Like I. They don't understand all my references.

[Henry Zabrowski]

My necklaces are caught in my fishnet gloves.

[Marcus Parks]

He was in Santa Barbara from 1964 to 1968, and he chose the ROTC.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, what a nerd.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, after that, he joined the Army. After that, Aquino joined the army and soon found himself as a psyop Special Forces officer at Fort Bragg during the Vietnam War. Reportedly, Aquino's psyop ideas included experiments to disorient North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers using amplified sounds, sometimes using so called demonic screams blared from helicopters overhead.

[Eddie]

A lot of them I did myself, was kind of fun just going.

[Marcus Parks]

When Akito traveled to Vietnam for an active duty tour In June of 1969, he brought a copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost with him. If you'll remember, Anton lavey based his ideas about the character of Satan on Milton's interpretation. Like lavey, Kino saw Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost. And since Aquino was going through a heavy existential and philosophical crisis at the time, he latched onto the idea that Satan might have better ideas than God. It must be said, however, that his crises had nothing to do with his career in the armed forces. Nor did it have anything to do about his feelings concerning Vietnam. Because Michael Aquino stayed in the military as a powerful and influential figure throughout his entire life up until the 2000s. And that was even with his incredib goofy eyebrows, which were styled into points to mimic devil horns.

[Eddie]

Diabolical.

[Marcus Parks]

But that really shows you how good Michael Aquino was at his job. He was so fucking good that the army put up with that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, but the army also likes scary, man.

[Eddie]

They like weirdos and they like people. Patriotic weirdos. Michael Aquino is a patriot through and through 100. He is a very similar to Mormons. Yeah, like that's why they use Mormons in the intelligence services. And they use Mormons for those types of things because they are Mormons have an ability to believe in something entirely not real. And they and just be able to dispel reality so hard that it makes them really good at being a part of the CIA.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Who do you think Michael Aquino's more? Who likes more, the United States of America or Satan?

[Marcus Parks]

I would say, I would say America.

[Eddie]

Well, I'd say he loves that he lives in America, but he wishes that you can understand that the power of Set himself would release you to an ocean of endless knowledge.

[Marcus Parks]

Boring.

[Eddie]

Exactly.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, when Anton lavey met Michael Aquino at the Rosemary's Baby screening, lavey simply gave him his card. It wasn't until Aquino was on leave in San Francisco in March of 1969 that he would see an ad in an underground newspaper advertising the performance of a so called satanic circle at Anton's black house.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They're gonna love me there.

[Eddie]

They're just gonna be so happy. I can't came so excited for my presence.

[Marcus Parks]

The circle the Aquino attended featured all of Anton's greatest hits, including a robed henchman stationed at the door, who is actually just a history professor. And a grand entrance from lavey himself emerging from an Egyptian sarcophagus. Now, Aquino was impressed by lavey's charisma, confidence and philosophy. So he went all in on the Church of Satan. He later wrote in the nerdiest way possible, quote, I reached out and I took the apple.

[Eddie]

God damn it.

[Marcus Parks]

How do you take it and make it just so not cool?

[Eddie]

That's the thing. Antonova was just so like. But he knew he needed these guys. That's the problem. He needed guys.

[Marcus Parks]

But did he though?

[Eddie]

I mean not. Not with what they would do, but he originally is like, okay, I need guys that aren't just drug Addicts and losers and strippers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I need like, yeah, someone's got to work the books.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Yeah. Well, not just intellectuals. Like that's what it is. Because that's really the people that he's surrounding himself. This at this point is like, it's intellectuals. It's, you know, people who say they're magicians, but they're really dentists, but they're people who have other going on. He needed some, he thought at least that he needed someone who could take care of the admin.

[Eddie]

It was highly curated as well. That's what also people don't particularly understand is how curated this environment was in the beginning. It really was friendly thinkers that were all willing to talk about this in a fun way and then just leave.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

You know what I mean? Like it was like very hip people.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. It's like guys who get into like Magic the Gathering, but they're cool. And then they just got to go deal with these nerds all the time.

[Eddie]

That's how it is. That's what Anton Levi, he. Yes, he was. It was his punishment.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, within just a few years, Michael Aquino was a major insider at the Church of Satan. Although he took on all the nerd roles that Anton lavey couldn't be bothered with. Like, for example, editing the church's internal publication, the Cloven Hoof.

[Eddie]

Excellent. Because I love templates. Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And I have two hooves for hands.

[Eddie]

Just get the fuck out of here. I just feel like there were so many conversations like, okay, Michael, now get the fuck out of here.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm done. I'm done. I'm done with you for today.

[Eddie]

I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear a single more thing about the email list. If I hear one more thing about an email list, I'm gonna fucking sacrifice you to myself.

[Henry Zabrowski]

How many empty doorways did Michael Aquino talk through? People just walking away slowly. There's another part that I wanted to.

[Eddie]

That's fine, I'll save it. I'll save it for when we're on a plane together.

[Marcus Parks]

Most importantly though, Michael Aquino was a member of the Church of Satan's governing body, the Council of Nine. This presumably is how Aquino came to be so heavily involved in a short lived organizational structure called the Grotto system. Incredibly, the Grotto system was modeled after the Boy Scout troops that both Aquino and lavey loved. The idea was that the Grotto system would give each member a chance to be more than a so called mail order Satanist. Using the Grotto system, members could share in ritual practice and discussion with their own local Satanists outside of San Francisco, wherever in the country they may be. By July of 1970, 25 satanic grottoes have been established around America with names like the Plutonian Grotto, the Asmodeus Grotto, the Babylon Grotto, the Karnat Grotto, and the Yugoth Grotto.

[Eddie]

Oh.

[Marcus Parks]

Each grotto, which was required to have at least five members.

[Eddie]

Can I ask which grotto had cold brew? That's like my main thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Carac.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay, I'll be whatever one was in Connecticut.

[Marcus Parks]

Each grotto which was required to have at least five members was led by someone who is at least a second degree witch or warlock. Each grotto also had to be approved by Michael Aquino and the rest of the Council of Nine, who were all fourth degree witches or warlocks.

[Eddie]

Oh, I just graduated. I'm fifth degree now. That is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You make the rules.

[Eddie]

Yes, I know.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That kind of is the problem. That is actually the main problem when

[Eddie]

you just make up a bunch of stuff and you say, okay, all of you individualists form a group.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So other than San Francisco, where was the next biggest community, do you know?

[Marcus Parks]

I actually don't know, but they were all over the country. Like I said, there are 25 of them. I would guess probably New York.

[Eddie]

It was New York and the uk.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Grotto's also had to make monthly reports about its members. What everyone's up to, how are the rituals going? And some even had their own local newsletters, like Satan Spawn, Devil's Advocate, Children of the Night, and my favorite, the Typhon Tusk. Ooh. Now, as far as Michael Aquino's role in the grotto system went, he handled some of the administration and of course, wrote the articles of protocol for the whole system, of course, which outlined the purpose of the grotto. Thanks. Oh, yeah. Anytime there's something with the words articles or protocol in it. Aquino's all over.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, Mike, why don't you take care of that?

[Eddie]

I was actually gonna volunteer. This is my.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is the funnest thing in the.

[Eddie]

I was thinking of a 12 point bullet point system where you go, michael, that's great. Get the out. Great, Michael. I do. I need to hear every minute of it. Do I get you? Every second of it.

[Marcus Parks]

Basically, Aquino believed because he was both an army man and an Eagle Scout, that people who work in formal organizations can realize their desires for power more easily. Grotto allowed Satanists to help each other rather than go it alone. And black magic ceremonies were, of course, far easier to find. Pull off if you had friends helping.

[Eddie]

But what does that do, Marcus? It creates a series of hierarchies.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And guess what Satanists don't like series of fucking hierarchies. We don't like them. No, but they hate them.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But they also hate being alone.

[Eddie]

Well, all humans do.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, but that's the thing. Just because I'm hanging out with a bunch of people, do I have to put a bunch of rules around it?

[Eddie]

Why we gotta fucking all have titles?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Can't we just hang out?

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But even though things were going swimmingly for the Church of Satan, on paper, it seems like Michael Aquino's influence in the organization took a lot of the fun out of the enterprise. For Anton, the Way. And the Way began getting disillusioned with the whole affair. Within just a few years, in 1972, Anton Lavey ended his public ceremonies at the Black House. In his mind, he'd wanted the Church of Satan to evolve into a, quote, kabbalistic underground instead of the long running pageant it had become. And that is, of course his words, long running pageant. And furthermore, the grotto system under Michael Aquino had, again, in lay's words, turned the Church into a Satan pen pal club.

[Eddie]

It's kind of funny. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It went from like ceremonies to meetings.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Eddie]

Yeah, exactly.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But concerning the pageantry, lavey began feeling embarrassed to be seen with members who wanted to show the whole world that they were Satanists all the time, wherever they went. Lavey said that he'd step off a plane and there his dark children would be huddled together in black velvet robes and capes with huge baphomet necklaces at the airport. Because there's a time and place for this shit and it ain't the fucking airport.

[Eddie]

I've learned.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he's got a target on his back. He doesn't need the moment he lands for there to be a crowd waiting for him.

[Eddie]

Yeah, Be like, here's the Church of Satan guy. Everybody kill him. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

See, from how lavey saw it, the grassroots people around the country didn't know much about subtlety or decorum. In other words, lavey was disappointed that his Satanists, they didn't know how to just be cool, just fucking hang out. It doesn't have to be like this all the fucking time. He said in my. This is my favorite Anton lavey quote.

[Eddie]

I was trying to present a cultured, mannered image. And their idea of protesting a shock was to wear their lodge regalia into the nearest Denny's. This is a thing that I, I think about all the time. Because this is kind of what I've even modeled myself after in a way. Because Anton lavey, he straight up, that's what he kept saying. He's like the Church of Satan. Part of me is only like a 20 part of me. Yeah. Like I actually have all these other things. I actually have all these other abilities and all these other interests and I started this thing and it was actually never supposed to be. Be a merch carrying club. Like this was supposed to go underground for me. This is supposed to be for me and for the people like minded to me. Cuz Satanists, if you believe how the Satanists believe themselves, we're the elite. That's the idea. Right. We're supposed to be the top of the top that don't get pulled in the nets of these religions. And it makes you naturally very divisive human being. But the dude just was like, can't you just do it with style?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. Or just hang out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He was right about the Denny's thing. I feel like that's wherever I see a Satan. This is in like a Denny's or a shitty diner.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I mean, I don't know what it is, but just, I mean it's a well known fact that goth kids are drawn to Denny's.

[Eddie]

It is a. It's a safe place.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, Perkins as well. They like Perkins.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No, I mean I don't know how many times you just hung out and it's. It was because you could hang out in a Denny's unlimited coffee and you could smoke and they won't kick you out. And they won't kick you out. And it's open 24 hours.

[Henry Zabrowski]

As long as you don't fight nobody. You good?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Oh yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, now. The inevitable backlash against the Church of Satan started getting dangerous. By 1974, while the black House was among the world's first Satanic tourist destinations, the crowds of looky loos and admirers also included people who genuinely wanted to hurt or kill Anton and his family.

[Eddie]

That's what we were talking about in the first episode. That's an inherent problem about being a Satanist is that you're asking people to punch you in the face.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And the star does look like a target.

[Marcus Parks]

It does, very much so. Lavey and his family therefore moved to a house in Sonoma, north of San Francisco. After enduring a barrage of bricks, eggs, spray paints, bullets and even a bomb, Lave became reclusive, fortifying the Black House with surveillance cameras and a 10 foot tall electrified fence. Even though he wasn't even living there anymore. It was more. The Black House basically became like the Church of Satan's office. Yeah. Then around the Halloween of 1974, Lave went public with his dissatisfaction. He said in an interview that he wanted to be nowhere near San Francisco Francisco during Halloween.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I get it.

[Marcus Parks]

He didn't want to be the center of attention for a bunch of Satanists he didn't like or respect. Further explaining that for him, which I totally get, Halloween was like New Year's Eve to a bartender.

[Eddie]

It's just the truth. Hanging out with Levi Tuesday night, man, that's when you want to meet the fucking Pope of the Church of Satan.

[Marcus Parks]

I want to meet the Pope of the church Satan on April 14th. Yes.

[Eddie]

Middle of the day.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, no. April 14th back. Because he's going to be. He's in preparations for Volpur. Just knocked.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I want to meet him sometime in, like, June.

[Eddie]

Yeah. What? After. During the normal anti Christian celebration, Lave

[Marcus Parks]

also announced that in an attempt to steer the Church back to a dignified place, he was done doing performative satanic rituals. He said that the new type of Satanist is not ostentatious nor garish, but a substantial, responsible citizen who prefers to keep his Satanism on the inside rather than on his sleeve. LeVay had also dismantled Michael Aquino's beloved grotto system because the majority of the grotto couldn't get their together due to rivalries, scandals, and the general types of antics that one would expect more in a high school glee club than in a satanic mini cult.

[Eddie]

Can I speak as the charismatic leader of a small group of people that do form side groups and explain that every single time you do that, when you form a Facebook group or you form a Reddit group begins to suck and does begin to eat itself. Because the Internet's big. Because groups of people in those areas for some reason just slowly become like evil or dark rats to each other.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah. Whenever you're like, group, like, chat on their, like text chat, like, changes names for the fifth time. It's time to go.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's time to get out of there. Yeah, it's. It's really. It's a. It's not just Satanists, it's any group of people. Like, you get too many people in one place and just for too long, everything has an end. And you kind of just need to say, like, okay, that's enough. But Anton Levay saying, like, we're not doing the Grotto system anymore. That was also. I. It seems like the beginning of the split between him and Michael Aquino.

[Eddie]

Very much so, because they were also what he's not telling the world is that he himself was taking magic more seriously on his own, personally.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And that was like the thing he started to understand. I wanted to do it for me and the Michael Aquino and the Order of the Trapezoid shit, all of that was supposed to be for his own private practice and for him to sort of teach himself. Because according to Michael Kino, that's the idea is that they started doing fake rituals and then one day they met something real.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Eddie]

At some point you stop blaming stress, sleep, or just getting older. If bedroom performance is in question, it's probably crossed your mind to do something about it.

[Marcus Parks]

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[Eddie]

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[Henry Zabrowski]

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[Eddie]

In the United States of America. There's a break in every 26 seconds. That means somewhere right now an intruder is getting closer. The problem is most security systems only alert you after a break in has already started. That's too late. Choose SimpliSafe to secure your home. Using the Outdoor Camera Series 2 and advanced AI alerts, SimpliSafe's US based live agents identify threats on your property and help deter them. Stopping crimes before it starts. That's real peace of mind. They've got a really great team security system that make sure people don't get in your house where it makes a big noise. And to me that's a big deal for me is that it protects all of our yelling with a siren in our studio, which is one of the most important things that can be protected. I don't care if thieves come and kidnap us. I don't care if, if marauders come and steal a our staff and bring them to another country against their will. As long as our words aren't affected, as long as their precious data isn't affected. And Simply Safe does that. And for that I say God bless you. Simply Safe.

[Henry Zabrowski]

God bless you.

[Eddie]

God bless you. Simply God bless you. Experience greater peace of mind with Simply Safe now available with an exclusive discount for our listeners. Right now you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplisafe.com that's half [e-mail] lpotl there's no safe like SimpliSafe.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Rise from your grave now.

[Marcus Parks]

Lav did continue as a leader of the church, but he narrowed his focus on the more intellectual and of course, the wealthier followers. Mainstream fame, as it turned out, resulted in mainstream people all up in. In your. And from what it seems like, lavey didn't want to be a mainstream figure. Instead, it seems like after the Church of Satan began to be far more trouble than it was worth, Anton lavey became far more concerned with how he could worm his way into Hollywood. Because Anton lavey was first and foremost an entertainer.

[Eddie]

Oh, yeah, baby.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, lavey had claimed that he'd worked as a Satanic consultant on Rosemary's Baby. And it was rumored that it was lavey himself who played Satan during the movie's impregnation scene. Neither of those things, of course, are true, but it is interesting.

[Eddie]

Yeah, it was Roman Polansky himself.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Really?

[Eddie]

Yeah, he did it. No, no, that's not true. He just, you know, he just, he's

[Marcus Parks]

just, he's an Evil man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, apparently.

[Marcus Parks]

But it is interesting that Anton's detachment from the church does coincide with his increasing involvement in Hollywood productions, even if all of his contributions were in the decidedly B movie category.

[Eddie]

He just wanted to make movies at this point. He knew. He. He. He knew. He just wanted to make movies. He never wanted to make a religion, really.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, it's entertainment.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, exactly. He wanted to make entertainment. Movies, tv, whatever.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Music. Yeah.

[Eddie]

But this is the big lesson here. The big lesson is that the way all of this magic shit works is that what Anton lavey understood, did not fully understand, even in his creation of it, is that you can't control it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And you really do become what you pretend to be. It is real. That is fucking real. It's why the senators change. It's why these people change, is because as soon as you get to that place, it changes you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it does. In 1973, Anton Lavey advised on a script for a TV movie starring William Shatner called the Horror at 37,000ft.

[Eddie]

Whoa.

[Marcus Parks]

Shatner, I suppose, was trying to recapture the magic of his classic Twilight Zone episode, Nightmare at 20,000ft.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, I thought it was the other thing.

[Marcus Parks]

So stupid, I know. No, it's incredibly stupid.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And which. And that's also. It's interesting that. Remember, William Shatner's other Twilight Zone episode was the one. The little devil creature, you know, we're at the diner, you know, just one more. Just one more.

[Eddie]

Yes. Which is honestly an incredible allegory for chat boxes and chatgpt.

[Marcus Parks]

It is. It really is. Yeah. What do I do? Tell me what to do next. But instead of a gremlin tearing the plane apart, that was nightmare at 20,000ft. Horror at 37,000ft.

[Eddie]

Completely different. Entirely different pitch. I don't want. Here there's. It's entirely different.

[Henry Zabrowski]

15,000 yards.

[Eddie]

Yeah, I like that. I like yards. I like. Think of football.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Eddie]

Football. Ghosts on a plane.

[Marcus Parks]

Terror at 30,000 inches.

[Eddie]

That's what I like. It's a real low one, but I like that.

[Marcus Parks]

Horror at 37,000ft was a high concept mess about a bunch of demonic druid ghosts causing havoc from an airplane's baggage compartment by torturing the passengers with deployment. Demonic visions. Yes. It is considered to be William Shatner's worst film, which is saying a lot.

[Eddie]

Just the idea of when, like, okay, right now you added a ghost. Yeah, absolutely. All right. When he goes in the plane going. Or he had a grandma, and that's fine. When he goes on the plane, it's fine. Drew, It's Perfect. Yeah, exactly. Boom. Irish done. British people. So scary. Absolutely. Where did Druid ghost.

[Marcus Parks]

Where does.

[Eddie]

Where did British ghost go? Baggage. They're in the baggage. In the bags?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Because that's where Crazy. No one knows what's in the bags. Nobody knows what's under the plane. Yeah. That's the scariest part of the plane.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Aren't we all mentally carrying a lot

[Eddie]

of that is what I'm saying. It's right itself. It's right itself.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, people say, you can't do art with tv. This is wrong.

[Eddie]

We're doing it wrong.

[Marcus Parks]

We're doing it. But even though horror was a flop, lavey also consulted on a movie called the Mesto Waltz, about a dying Satanist piano player who transfers his soul into the body of a younger man. That younger man was played by Alan Alda, you know, from mash. Wow. Yeah. No, I haven't seen the. The poster from Mephisto Waltz is awesome. It's very cool. It's got a girl on the floor and she's drawing a pentagram. It's. It's very cool. But I hear, like, the set is really cool. But overall, like, they say Alan Alda is the worst part of the movie. Yeah, they say he flubs it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I can't now. Not all done.

[Marcus Parks]

He's young.

[Eddie]

Well, I will say, if we're saying that the set is good, it's not a good movie. You know what I mean? Point being, like, you know, I just. I'm proud of them for getting it all together.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

You know. Wow.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I just can't talk about Frankenstein.

[Eddie]

Yes. Wow. They really put a lot of work in that, huh?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I'm. I'm a massive B movie guy, so, like. So whenever someone says, like, the set is incredible, I'm like, I'll watch that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And this one got better reviews, but the praise was mostly focused on the occult imagery, the set, you know, all the various, you know, things in the background. That, of course, was all of the Leve's doing. Critics, however, were less kind about the car, which involved a possessed Lincoln Continental that runs people over for no good reason and was parodied many years later in an episode of Futurama called the Honking.

[Eddie]

Had anything to do with Christine.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, well, I. I think it was somewhere around the same time as Christine. But while Levay bragged that the car was filled with occult symbolism, the film's writers denied all that, saying that they had simply written a quick ripoff of Jaws using a car instead of a shark. And A few vague occult elements.

[Eddie]

That's duel.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

No movie. No, no, no, no, listen to me. No, no, no, no. It's called the Car. You know what that actually kind of imagines. That's two cars. This is not what they're about to do. Several cars. It's about one car. It's the car, okay?

[Marcus Parks]

It's duck car and it's a Lincoln, which is nice.

[Eddie]

And it goes on its own. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And we all know what Lincoln did

[Eddie]

suck dick until he.

[Marcus Parks]

But out of all the movies Anton lavey was involved with in ways big and small, none were more insane, more satanic, more entertaining, nor more incoherent than the Devil's Reign.

[Eddie]

Yes. Oh, it's awesome. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Starring again, William Shatner as well as Tom Skerritt as the hero. And Ernest Borgnine in one of his biggest, best roles as a manic satanic priest.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Dude, it was awesome. Marcus made me watch it last night and I can't tell if I know more or less about Satanism now.

[Marcus Parks]

You know less.

[Eddie]

You know less. Amazing in this movie. Yeah, he really enjoyed him and he disavowed him afterwards.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Although it was, you know, it. He said later that, oh, I hid my trailer the whole time. He didn't. He had a great time. Everyone on the. Everyone on the set had a great time except William Shatner. And the only reason why William Shatner had a bad time was because it was filmed in Mexico and nobody in Mexico knew who the William Shatner was. No one seen Star Trek and so he was jealous.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The set was nice.

[Marcus Parks]

The set was amazing.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, and bonus horror movie fact, A plastic mold was made of William Shatner's face for the big climax in the Devil's Reign. And that mold was turned into a mass produced Halloween mask. And that same model of mask was later painted white and turned into the face of Michael Myers for the Halloween movies.

[Eddie]

Hell yeah. Fascinating. So it did lead to something good. Yeah, it did.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, it actually. One thing we're gonna get to here in a second. It led to a lot of.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, concerning the Devil's Reign. The plot barely makes sense and I've seen it like a few times.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, they melt because of the rain.

[Eddie]

That's. Cause that's cause of the doings of the rain.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, best as I can tell it, Ernest Borgnine plays a satanic priest who's been trying for hundreds of years to obtain a book from a family of former followers. The book is filled with the names of followers Borgnine has obtain for Satan. You Know the. Remember all the Salem witch trial stuff, you know that put the name in the devil's book. But those souls cannot be claimed by Satan until Borg9 gets the book back. And therein lies the plot.

[Eddie]

Oh, it's kind of like when you left all your Marlboro Miles. Like if you had left them behind and you can't get them. So that's what he need. Oh, that's what it is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eddie]

Cuz you don't count.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I don't count.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, no Marble Miles in heaven, no. Oh hell yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Could smoke as much as you want, but if you don't turn them in, you ain't getting the windbreaker.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

Now the Devil's Rain was a full on production and Anton lavey was present for the entire five week shoot down in Mexico. He did set design, costume design, and his name is prominently displayed in the opening credits as technical adviser and high priest of Satan, which, I mean, it's more of a publicity stunt than anything.

[Eddie]

I'm happy for him. This was his dream. It was.

[Marcus Parks]

But Anton lavey did put quite a bit of Satanism into the movie and he did work both as an advisor and as crew when needed. During the filming of one scene, for example, lavey led the local Mexican extras playing satanic cult members in a recitation of actual magical rituals from the Lesser Key of Solomon, which were also printed in the Satanic Bible. But since the extras didn't speak English, Levin May wrote out syllable by syllable cue cards for the scene and he stood next to the cards during the filming, pointing to each syllable for the extra's benefit. This actually happened. There are pictures of him doing it.

[Eddie]

All right, so everybody, I just want to say, just first of all, I'm so happy you all here. And just want to say, okay, here we go. We do from stopping. It's Reggie. Reggie Aga. Very good. Satanis. Say, say, say, say.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Bueno.

[Eddie]

Yeah, no, no, no, I know why you're saying that. But today Satan is bueno.

[Marcus Parks]

They did actually have to search like far and wide for locals who were willing to be in the movie because most of them were scared shitless. Yeah, all the whole thing, the whole production being around them.

[Eddie]

I had a, you know, we have our handyman, Arturo, we talk with him quite a bit about the devil image. Understands quite a bit about it.

[Marcus Parks]

That's good, that's really good. I did once have a cleaning lady leave my, leave my home halfway and through the job after she cleaned my office, actually she just walked into the office and then just Left without saying a word.

[Eddie]

The lady that came and cleaned our house. We have a wonderful lady. I won't name her by name because, you know, she's wonderful. She works for here at the network too. But I will always say that after that murder for show we did on the 20th anniversary and I didn't know I'd left the dildo inside of my pants for this scene. You know, it's like a whole thing was like a dildo just there amongst my pants.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And she didn't take it out when the scene's over.

[Eddie]

Didn't even think about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Was the nacho cheese still on it? Yeah.

[Eddie]

And she cleaned it all off and left it on top of the sink.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's so nice.

[Eddie]

That was one of the nicest things. Cuz I know it wasn't on the sink before and then I came back and it was definitely just on the sink.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's a Ray's move.

[Eddie]

Oh no, I gave her. I. I gave her a. I gave

[Marcus Parks]

her a little bit more. Get a bonus for that one.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, I gave her just being like a sho shoe.

[Eddie]

Hey, you know, like we don't always. My. My ass.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, you don't have to clean the dildos, but if you do, could

[Eddie]

you use the scented oil?

[Marcus Parks]

Not satisfied to stand behind the camera. Lavey even talked his way into cameos in a few scenes. But interestingly, when you watch those scenes, Anton lavey looks uncomfortable, almost nervous. Which is why I think Anton lavey never quite made it in Hollywood. See, lavey could hang with intellectuals, magicians, and even movies, movie stars, one on one. But in the end, I think that Hollywood as a whole, it may have been just a little too intimidating of an experience for the dirty pope to handle.

[Eddie]

Everybody thinks they can do it. Everybody thinks they can do it.

[Marcus Parks]

They really do.

[Eddie]

And then you step on stage sometimes and you realize, oh, what have I done? And I think that he's used to being the coolest guy in the room.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And then when you're there and you're the very sport nine, you ain't gonna

[Henry Zabrowski]

be the coolest guy in the room.

[Eddie]

No sir, not on the movie set.

[Marcus Parks]

Especially not Ernest Borgnine when he puts on that amaz amazing devil makeup.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh my God, it's incredible, dude.

[Marcus Parks]

So cool.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The makeup in that movie is really good.

[Marcus Parks]

It's insane.

[Eddie]

Movie star. That's not just. That's Ernest. We forget at the time. That's a wild bunch. That's movie Oscar winner Marty. You know, like so he's. I can feel him being like, oh, I'm second fiddle here.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And he's. Yeah, he does the Beijing Mr. Herman. Like, he does that. The thing where he's, like looking down the pipe, you know, like.

[Marcus Parks]

No, there's the first scene that he's in. He's kind of in the background and his. You can see his eyes darting around. He's like looking at the members of the production.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He even has a giant gold helmet on.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Can't do it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But the most interesting bit of trivia about the Devil's Reign concerns the actor who played the head henchman in the satanic cult. He only had one line. But the Devil's Reign was indeed the first movie to ever feature John Travolta.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They gave him billing too, even though he had one line.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, they gave him billing because of the job that he booked after filming was done. So we've mentioned this many times before, but it was on the set of the Devil's Reign that someone gave the stressed out young actor a book that they said would help manage his life. That book was, of course, Dianetics, and it was that book that set Travolta down the path towards Scientology.

[Eddie]

Thank you so much for giving me this book. It's one of the nicest things I've ever read. But you think that maybe you could give me one of them gay hand jobs? Come on, Mr. Cop.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It is. Because Devil's Reign is like Anton Le Fay's battlefield Earth.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, a little bit, sure.

[Eddie]

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Interestingly, though, even though Travolta's role was a smaller one. It was. And even though John Travolta was, at this point, it was his first movie, he was not a star in any way whatsoever. It was said that he and Anton Levey became fast friends. And a picture does indeed exist of the two of them standing together in a candid moment. And it really shows you how Anton lavey is like, he's sitting there wearing a T shirt.

[Eddie]

Anton Lay, everybody says was the most charming man in the room when you met him. Is that when you met him? He's the exact. He's everything you wouldn't think he's be. He's like warm and ingratiating salesman and sweet and like, like, memorizes your name, does all.

[Marcus Parks]

He's a car.

[Eddie]

Yes. He's really good at it.

[Marcus Parks]

See, Travolta was fascinated by old Hollywood, particularly Marilyn Monroe. And lavey claimed to have known Monroe biblically. But Travolta's obsession with Marilyn was not about her looks or her Gnashing and farting during orgasm, as lavey had put it. Instead, lavey said that John Travolta wanted to know how Marilyn moved and acted because Travolta could do the most convincing and realistic Marilyn Monroe impersonation that Anton lavey had ever seen. Straight as an arrow. That John Travolta.

[Eddie]

I just like to see. I just like to see a straight guy give a. Give a lady a shot.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Straight as a dildo.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, I mean, just. I mean, Hairspray. He's an incredible drag queen.

[Eddie]

Really is incredible in Hairspray.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

O. Happy birthday. I'm trying to figure out how to do it. Oh, oh, oh.

[Marcus Parks]

Lavey also said that he took such a shining to Travolta that he did a satanic success ritual for John TRA du filming. And sure enough, shortly after, Travolta did indeed book the role that would make him famous. That's when he booked Vinny Barberino on welcome Back Cotter. And that is why John Travolta is in the opening credits, because between the filming of the movie and the release of it, he got on welcome Back Cotter and was immediately famous.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Happens all the time.

[Eddie]

Such a funny thing to do. A ritual for the giant satanic ritual to get welcome Back Cotter. It's such a. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

To become a sweat hog.

[Eddie]

Let me just hear that name. Let me hear you do it one more time. I just need to hear. To make sure, Mr. Cop. Yes, I can see it now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Travolta was brutal and carry though.

[Marcus Parks]

He was. He very much was.

[Eddie]

Yeah, but that wasn't why. He wasn't verbal welcome Back Cotter. No. It should have been awful.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, he got. He had his little taste of Satanism. I think he was able to channel it in the other place.

[Eddie]

There's many people that have had run in with both.

[Marcus Parks]

But while John TR's encounter with Anton Lave is one of those forgotten pieces of Hollywood trivia, the celebrity relationship that has become legendary over the decades is Anton's long friendship with the singer, actor and Entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. Mr. Bo jangle. Yeah.

[Eddie]

I love Sammy Davis Jr. Oh, how could you not? I love him.

[Marcus Parks]

He's amazing. Now, I always thought that Sammy Davis Jr's reputation as a Satan was a joke, a passing fancy, overblown throughout the years because it is objectively insane that a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack was a devoted Satanist. But while it is insane, it is also very true and it shockingly makes

[Henry Zabrowski]

a lot of sense.

[Marcus Parks]

It does. Was it public at times. Yeah. He would talk about it. He wrote about it in his books.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Sinatra knew.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, we're going to get to that here in a bit about Sinatra's opinions on it and how it may have affected Sammy Davis Jr's relationship with Anton Leve.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, okay. Yeah. It's interesting because it also brings Anton Lave one step closer to Don Rickles again.

[Eddie]

Yeah, right. We.

[Marcus Parks]

By the way, the information about Sammy Davis Jr. And Anton Lavey mostly comes from this fantastic Rolling Stone article written a couple of years ago called Inside Sammy Davis Jr's Secret Satanic Past by Alex Bott Chari. It's a really great read and I

[Eddie]

watch a great documentary on him. And he real. Sammy Davis Jr. JR. Is just one. What a complicated figure.

[Marcus Parks]

Extraordinarily complicated.

[Henry Zabrowski]

His song the Joker is a must for any comedian.

[Eddie]

It is. Mr. Bojangles is incred. I love, I love the song Mr. Bojangles.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, but Sammy Davis Jr. Was a singer, not a writer exactly. He just did a fantastic version of Mr. Bojangles. And his version of Mr. Bojangles was sad.

[Eddie]

Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, that was Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, I believe the real Bojangles. I, I, that's who I'm gonna say it is without googling.

[Eddie]

Good, good.

[Marcus Parks]

It was either them, Jerry, Jeff Walker, or maybe Bob Dylan.

[Eddie]

I don't know.

[Marcus Parks]

But to understand how and why Sammy Davis Jr. Was so drawn to Satanism, you got to understand Sammy Davis Jr. And in understanding Sammy Davis Jr. You might understand why a lot of people are drawn to the Church of Satan. See, more than even most performers, Sammy Davis Jr. Was driven and defined by a constant and desperate need for acceptance, which came mostly from the complications and humiliations that he had to deal with as a black American. Born in 1980, 1925, hailing from Harlem, Sammy Davis Jr's parents were both vaudeville entertainers. But while his dad was black, his mother was Cuban and strangely, incredibly racist. Sammy's own mother would hurl racist remarks at Sammy from birth, telling him that he looked like a little monkey. And not in a cute way.

[Eddie]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

And his mother never let him forget how dark his skin really was.

[Eddie]

She. She did it.

[Marcus Parks]

That's.

[Eddie]

That's a long. Complicated.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Complicated.

[Eddie]

Complicated. And he was. He was one of those where. He never went to school.

[Marcus Parks]

No.

[Eddie]

He could barely read or write.

[Marcus Parks]

Natural entertainer. Started performing at the age of three.

[Eddie]

You'd say natural entertainer, but they also kind of forced it on him. But he also was natural school. Exactly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Babe Ruth was good at School? You think Bruce Lee did math?

[Marcus Parks]

It's 20, 26. People need to go to school.

[Henry Zabrowski]

School that good now I ain't going no schools.

[Eddie]

We know you're not anymore.

[Marcus Parks]

You went to elementary school, junior high and high school.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I did graduate high school.

[Eddie]

Like, way too many years of community college.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I went there for a couple years and did nothing. Yeah, I wrote on the school paper. That was my only class.

[Marcus Parks]

That's nice.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well. Sammy Davis Jr. Toured extensively throughout his childhood until he was drafted to fight in World War II in 1943. But after spending years absorbing cheers and applause from crowds, he was now dealing in the army with racial slurs and physical violence from white soldiers. Davis's nose was broken repeatedly. That's what gave him. You know, he's got that flat bridge on his nose. It came from soldiers breaking his nose over and over and over again.

[Eddie]

That wasn't even a hard time in the army, man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He was also small guy.

[Eddie]

He's.

[Marcus Parks]

He was 5, 4. He was very small guy. That wasn't even close to the worst of it. Soldiers would cover his body in white paint. They'd write the N word on his chest. Once they even soaked him in urine. The only time he wasn't abused, he said, was when he was performing for those same soldiers. Which has got to you up also.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's crazy that he just ran with white dudes like. Like, it's.

[Eddie]

This is a part of the complicated thing of Sammy Davis Jr. By the time hate us, Sammy Davis Jr. Wanted to make it in show business. And he knew the complicated relationship he would have to string in order to make it. Make it, make it. Which means he would need to be entered into, which is, at this point, a barred off white person's world, and he would need to be invited into it, which did happen. And there were a couple of guys. There was that one that put his whole family on. They put him on when they were younger and they put Sammy. And he was the first guy to ever touch a black man. It was this guy. It was. I forgot his name. It was his host. Where he took Sammy Davis Jr. And he kissed him on the cheek. And it changed everything. It was a segregated show, but it took you. He had to ingratiate himself with a bunch of people who hated him.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. To do it, he made a lot of compromises. And, you know, as we're about to get into, like. It gave him a really bad reputation.

[Eddie]

It did.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, after his discharge, Sammy Davis Jr. Returned to the stage and soon skyrocketed to Stardom. But after the near fatal car crash in 1954 that gave him his trademark glass, glass eye, Sammy started questioning the nature of God and spirituality. Because Sammy Davis Jr. Was a seeker of spiritual knowledge.

[Eddie]

And he automatically understood this idea of, oh, God gives me these challenges. These are just challenges and shit. Fuck you. Why, why now?

[Marcus Parks]

He started with Scientology, but thankfully moved on to Judaism with all due speed. But reportedly after he told his Jewish friend, the comedian Jerry Lewis, that he'd converted to Judaism, Lewis said, and I'd like you to, to take this one, Eddie.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, you don't have no problems already,

[Eddie]

which is an incredibly funny Jewish thing to say. He is. And apparently he's. He learned Hebrew.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Billy Crystal said he would call him for challenges of the soul. Yeah, he would call him as his rabbi.

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, he was really good to Billy Crystal, notoriously.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But while Sammy's fame was still rising, he continually had to put up with from people who didn't accept him for who he was. When he joined Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and the rest to form the Rat pack in the 50s, Davis found himself the butt of many a racist joke. Sinatra routinely called Davis smokey. And he said that Davis had to smile to be seen in the dark. Dean Martin was fond of picking up the diminutive Sammy Davis Jr. And saying that he would like to thank the NAACP for this wonderful trophy. He was a prop.

[Eddie]

Yeah. And he, he knew that he served a function within the Rat Pack and it became, at first, he thought, had power over it, but then the bigger the Rat Pack got, the more it became like aimed at him.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, those old roasts, those old Dean Martin roast were so racist, he was barely a part of them though.

[Eddie]

Yeah, he didn't do any of that, really.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Sammy Davis Jr. Had also married a white woman. And his interracial marriage had caused quite the stir amongst the establishment. So When Sammy Davis Jr. Entered the 1960s, he was seen as too forward thinking for the whites. But because of his association with the Rat Pack, he was seen as too much of an Uncle Tom for black radicals.

[Eddie]

But he was a hardcore like guy before that.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I mean, he joined Martin Luther King Jr. At the march on Washington and in Selma. He was on the KKK's kill list. But the Black Power radicals of the 60s, they saw Sammy Davis Jr. As an assimilationist and they were none too fond of him marrying a white woman either. So after divorcing his wife for unrelated reasons, Davis chased acceptance in the the black community by growing his hair into a big afro. Buying a few designer dashikis and dating a black woman named Altavis Gore, whom he eventually married. Now, it must be said at this point that Sammy Davis Jr. Had an insatiable sexual appetite. Yeah, and Altavist Gore was fully accepting when Davis told her that the only way it was gonna work is if they had an open marriage, which is satanic.

[Eddie]

Must have bought Jangles. You can't just let him have one lady.

[Marcus Parks]

But despite his efforts, Sammy Davis Jr. Still spent the 60s as a pariah amongst his own people and a prop amongst the whites. Plus, because he wasn't a songwriter, he didn't have any money from royalties. All of his movies also flopped because his audience was aging. And the kids in the 60s, they didn't give a shit about Sammy Davis Jr. So in a desperate bid to be wanted by anybody, Sammy made an extremely ill advised appearance at the 1972 Republican convention where he hugged a visibly uncomfortable Richard Nixon on stage.

[Eddie]

Which, you know, that should have been thanking his lucky stars that Sammy Davis Jr. Wanted to be standing next to him. And it's really, it's sad because it did it up. Sammy Duvous Jr's whole life.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh yeah, and the whole rap pack was there, I imagine.

[Marcus Parks]

No, it was just Sammy Davis Jr. It was a.

[Eddie]

It's.

[Marcus Parks]

The picture is real. Like It's Sammy Davis Jr. He's hugging Richard Dixon, he's got his eyes closed and Nixon looks like he's like, get the off of me. Yes, it looks bad. It's bad for everybody. Now the backlash, of course, nearly ruined Sammy's career. But after he appeared on an episode of the controversial sitcom all in the Family in which he ad libbed a shocking kiss with Archie Bunker, the show's resident bigot. Sammy Davis Jr. Had a little bit

[Eddie]

of cultural cachet and he wrote that whole thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, he didn't.

[Eddie]

You surprised all of them.

[Marcus Parks]

Davis therefore got a meeting with NBC to discuss projects. And Davis pitched an idea about a guy who worked for Satan.

[Eddie]

Dude, he did your pretty face going to hell. We're gonna get to that here in a second.

[Marcus Parks]

We're gonna get to that here in a second. I have some questions about that. And coincidentally, NBC already had a comedy with a similar concept with a working title, Beat the Devil, written by the same guys who'd helmed Bewitched. So, you know, they already knew a little bit about witchiness, satanism, so on and so forth. Their idea was folded into Sammy's idea of a satanic comedy and thus a show called Poor Devil starring Sammy Davis Jr. As a damned soul named Sammy, was born and put into production.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he couldn't be in Bewitched cuz if he winked, he would have fell over.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Poor Devil is in essence a satanic version of It's a Wonderful Life. Davis plays a damned soul working the coal furnace who wants a promotion in a businesslike hell in which he's been working for over a thousand years to earn his satanic wings, so to speak. He. He has to convince an accountant at a department store on earth, played by Jack Klugman from the Odd Couple, to sell his soul to the devil, played by none other than Christopher Lee.

[Eddie]

Incredible cast.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, it sounds incredible. Also, Adam west is in it.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But aside from a few entertaining moments, it is surprisingly bland. It has good ideas, but it's still written like a 1973 NBC TV movie. It's got two terrible pacing, way too much filler, and a lot of bad jokes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I bet they made him cut all

[Marcus Parks]

the cool, of course, but the way hell.

[Eddie]

No piss rivers. No. No piles of rapists playing basketball.

[Marcus Parks]

Speaking of piss rivers, the way hell is structured on the show is more of a business. It's fairly similar to how your show, your Pretty Face is Going to Hell is set up. So do you know if Dave Willis and Casper Kelly, do you know if they ever saw Poor Devil?

[Eddie]

I'm literally emailing him right now. I want to. I mean, I asked about them right now. I'm literally going to ask him right now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You were like mad when Marcus was describing the plot, but it's just like this obviously came out way before.

[Marcus Parks]

It's 73, 1973.

[Eddie]

What was it called again?

[Marcus Parks]

Poor Devil.

[Eddie]

Poor Devil, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And it's, you know, it's an hour, it's about an hour, 10 minutes long. And it's fully like. It is like Sammy's character, his, you know, damned soul character. He even has like a girlfriend who works reception. You know, there's offices. It's pretty face.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's a great idea.

[Eddie]

Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's a great idea. It's almost like a show that should still be on television. It's almost like a show that could have continued for a bunch of years of the entire network continued to exist. Can't now because they destroyed the network and they, they took the building down. They tore the building down where we did it all.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Some would say it ran its course.

[Eddie]

Ah, you. It did.

[Marcus Parks]

I loved it. I could have. I. I could have seen. I could have seen more. I could have seen much more.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's definitely, you know, your best work.

[Eddie]

Thank you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Including us.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. You know, I actually have no problem agreeing with that.

[Eddie]

Yeah, it's my best work Now.

[Marcus Parks]

While Poor Devil is not good, it does have far more satanic overtures than anyone watching at home may have realized. And that was all due to Sammy Davis Jr. The most entertaining part of the whole show, in fact, is Sammy Davis Jr. Mugging while flashing the devil horn salute. He's got even got one little fingernail painted red. The executive producer of the show was impressed by these little details that Sammy Davis Jr. Put into the show, thinking that Sammy had merely done extra research for the role. But what nobody knew was that Sammy Davis Jr. Had been dancing around the Church of Satan for years and had even participated in satanic rituals. In the late 60s, Hollywood used to

[Eddie]

be so much more fun. Holy.

[Marcus Parks]

Sammy Davis Jr himself wrote. He wrote in 1968, back when the Church of Satan was still hip. He got an impromptu invitation from a group of young actors who were all attending a Church of Satan ritual in the Hollywood Hills. At the ceremony, Davis saw a hooded priest insert a massive dildo into a naked woman lying atop an altar. And much to the approval of the famously horny sand Sammy Davis Jr. Who also enjoyed his substances quite a bit, the whole thing ended in a drug fueled orgy.

[Eddie]

Yeah, I like the way this is going here, cat. That's my Sammy Davis Jr. I'm trying to get it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's, it's hard to do it. I was trying it on too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Davis wrote, quote, it was all fun

[Eddie]

and games and Dungeons and Dragons and Battery.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, I can't understand what you're saying. I can't understand what you're saying at all.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All right. It was all fun and games and inductions and dragons and debauchery.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, I'll try, I'll try, I'll try. It's all fun and games and Dungeons and Dragons and debauchery. And as long as the chick was happy and wasn't really going to get anything sharper than a dildo stuck in the. I wasn't going to walk away from it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That sounds like Sammy.

[Eddie]

That's a real low bar.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, it is a low bar.

[Eddie]

It's just sharper than a dildo.

[Henry Zabrowski]

As long as we're not going to murder her, I'm here.

[Eddie]

Anything else? Play ball.

[Marcus Parks]

And as long as she's into it, that's just like as long as she's happy. But besides the sex, the point here was that the Church of Satan had a policy of radical acceptance, for better or worse. And Sammy Davis Jr. Was a man who would. Spent his entire life searching for a place where he could be accepted and wanted for who he actually was rather than what people thought he should be.

[Eddie]

Well, you know, we went through Scientology first, even before Judaism.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I mentioned it.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So were you listening?

[Eddie]

Yeah, no, we, I, I don't know if you said he went, he got hardcore, slightly into Scientology very first. Then the Judaism hit and he liked Judaism. Then he did that.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And then he really was just like, oh, he was just truly like, I, I just love this guy. An old school Hollywood guy who's just like spiritually seeking.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And super mixed up and, and, and dropped into an incredibly hard situation, an incredibly really hard time to be, you know, a black American. And the Church of Satan made him happy.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they, and they accepted him, you know. Now Sammy was, as I, as we said, a natural born seeker. So he learned what he could about Satanism and later put those details into Poor Devil. But when the TV movie finally aired in 1973, set in San Francisco, no less, there was someone down at Lave's black house watching Poor Devil with wrapped interest. That viewer was Diane Hagarty, co founder of the Church of Satan. And when Jack Klugman's character is trying to find Sammy halfway through the show, Klugman reached for the phone and exclaimed,

[Eddie]

the Church of Satan downtown. They'll know how to reach him.

[Marcus Parks]

And with that mention of the Church of Satan on a mainstream TV show, Diane Hagarty later said that she nearly fell out of her chair. Two days later, Hagarty got a letter from Michael Aquino. He had also seen Poor Devil, and he gave a gushing review, calling the program, quote, a magnificent commercial for the church. Lavey agreed and began formulating a plan to recruit Mr. Show Business into the Church of Satan. And that is where we will pick back up next week for our conclusion to our series on Anton Levey.

[Eddie]

Oh, yeah, and that's what we'll sell at a couple of these nerds. Small little mistakes and little like, let's just say the things that they left out that she put in would lead to a lot of devastation in a way we would actually see. This will turn into. You got the Church of Satan on one hand, that will turn into some form of political organization that's largely neutered, and then the Temple of Set that will spawn a bunch of evil. And we will get there.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, yeah, well, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you guys. I always wanted to learn about Anton Lev, but never cared to crack the book myself. There we go.

[Eddie]

That's why we do this.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's why we're here.

[Eddie]

Go to patreon.com podcast, you can listen to the show ad free. You can also see last stream on the left live every Tuesday, 5pm PST. It's on the Patreon. You can also go over to LP on the left at both of the social medias. I'm going to say both.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, both of them.

[Eddie]

Because I'm doing more than this. No, we're doing Tik Tok and Instagram and that's it. If that.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I'm not doing anything else. And don't forget to watch us on Netflix as well, please.

[Eddie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And check out LPN TV on YouTube. We have HGX 2 is a about to reach the finals. And it's going to be Henry versus Julie. And you're going to see all of your judges come back.

[Eddie]

It's going to be a blast. I know you want no mercy at your wife.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I dare you to try and fight her because she will whoop both of our asses.

[Eddie]

Intellectually is where I'm safe.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Physically she could take any of the three of us.

[Eddie]

No, no, no, no. She's quite strong. I've seen her with the rocks.

[Marcus Parks]

Very, very strong.

[Eddie]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And if you watch the stream on YouTube, it premieres directly after that. And that's going to be 7pm PST on YouTube. And the stream, of course, comes out every Thursday at 6:00pm Great, good. Oh, yeah. And we're hitting the road. We got three JK Ultras left. That's it, you animals. All right, so June 27th, Grand Rapids, Michigan. GLC live at 20 Monroe. And then the next night, Henry and I are going off to London, Ontario to do some side stories.

[Eddie]

Check that out. Sweet. Ontario. Murder capital of Canada.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, great. July 17th, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Kane's Ballroom. July 18th, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And that's going to be at the Tower Theater. And. And then I'm hitting the road. I'm doing a lot of stand up. I got a show the very next night in Plano, Texas. I got a ton of shows in July. I'm gonna be in Bethlehem, Newark, New York City, Plano, and then I'm gonna be all over the place. Go check it out. Just come see me live. Oh, here in la. Henry are going to. Henry and I are going to do the Comedy Store.

[Eddie]

Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's going to be a blast. We're Going to do the belly room. They let us in.

[Eddie]

We're going to go in there and we are just going to impress the hell yeah. Out of these standups.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. It's going to be for Ed Larson and friends on July 26th. Go check that out. And then I'll be in Chicago after that. Go to edit tunes.com for all tickets.

[Eddie]

Thanks. Hail Satan, y'. All.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, hail, hail Tootsie.

[Eddie]

Hail, Tootsie. Oh, yeah. Why do they always go so young? Yeah. Only 19.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, God, she had so much time to live.

[Eddie]

I can't believe it. But honestly, you did good and you treated her well and you sent her off in a nice way.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I did. I did. She was a good baby girl. And when I get the ashes back, I'll shoot them out of a cannon. Instagram or something.

[Marcus Parks]

Do they send those in the mail or is there a courier?

[Henry Zabrowski]

They sometimes they send them in the mail, but depends on where you go. I gotta go pick mine up.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes. And I w. And I did not, dude.

[Marcus Parks]

God.

[Henry Zabrowski]

These at home, people who come and like, they try, they charge like a.

[Eddie]

I, I, I took her to the vet.

[Henry Zabrowski]

82 bucks at home, like, euthanasia is like a thousand dollars. I was like, I was on hold. They're like, make your decision in the next 10 minutes. I was like, go yourself.

[Eddie]

And the key is you need to have an awning that you can put a noose over. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I was like, I'm a smothering myself.

[Marcus Parks]

I thought you meant at home. Cremation.

[Eddie]

No, no, no.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That'd be fun. Yeah, yeah.

[Eddie]

Whoa. Just like a ceramic, like, thing that you could just toss animals in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fun.

[Henry Zabrowski]

If it had one of those, it'd

[Marcus Parks]

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[Eddie]

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